Amazon wins multi-million pound Government contract

A Cabinet Office team which is being advised by Amazon’s top UK executive handed the tech giant a multi-million pound contract to host parts of its site. 

The Government Digital Service, which is in charge of the gov.uk website, awarded Amazon’s cloud business a contract worth up to £6.6m in early June, according to filings published last week.

The contract was for a "flexible hosting environment for digital products" and would run until next June. It is understood that it was an extension of an earlier agreement between the two parties, which has been in place since 2011. 

The latest contract appears to have started just over a week after The Sunday Telegraph revealed that Amazon exec Doug Gurr had been drafted in to supervise work at the Government Digital Service (GDS). 

Mr Gurr is understood to be part of a group brought in to advise GDS with a review into how the Government uses technology. He will be stepping down from Amazon in mid-November, and taking up a post at the National History Museum. 

There is no suggestion of impropriety in how the latest contract was awarded. However, it has raised questions among MPs with Damian Collins, the former chair of the DCMS select committee, saying: "There needs to be fairness and transparency in the process whenever government contracts are awarded. It should be neither a perception nor a reality for one company to get special treatment."

A spokesman for Amazon said: “This is a contract renewal which was awarded well before members of the Digital Economy Council were asked to contribute to a review of the Government’s Digital Data and Technology Function.

"To suggest that review is connected to this contract award in any way is misleading and untrue.”

The Cabinet Office declined to comment. 

This is not the first time Mr Gurr’s ties have come under scrutiny, and earlier this year, questions were raised over a contract between Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Britain’s property ownership registry. Mr Gurr acts as an adviser to Land Registry.

Experts, however, warned that the award risked damaging public trust.

Robert Barrington, a professor of Anti-Corruption Practice at the University of Sussex, said: "Public trust is really important here and anything that undermines public trust is a bad thing. Frankly it doesn’t look good, and if it doesn’t look good they should be doing something about it."