The government has been criticised for spending up to £600,000 defending a legal challenge against its award of a contract to a company run by long-term associates of Michael Gove and Dominic Cummings.
The estimated costs could exceed the £550,000 the government spent on the contract with the company, Public First, to conduct focus groups on its Covid-19 messaging.
Public First is a policy and research company run by James Frayne and Rachel Wolf, a married couple who have both previously worked with Gove, the Cabinet Office minister, and Cummings, who was the prime minister’s chief adviser when the contract was agreed last March.
The contract was not put out to competitive tender, under emergency regulations that waived normal procurement procedures due to the pandemic.
The Good Law Project (GLP), a not-for-profit organisation that raises money through crowdfunding to question the legality of some government conduct, issued a judicial review challenge last summer, having claimed there was “apparent bias” in the award of the contract and that competitive tendering should not have been waived.
The Cabinet Office rejects those claims; it said at the time that Public First was appointed due to its “wealth of experience” in conducting the necessary research, and described as “nonsense” any suggestion it was awarded the contract due to its links to Gove and Cummings.
Frayne has said Public First’s work researching public opinion, particularly among “hard-to-reach groups”, was vital and “consistently of the highest quality, performed at unusually short notice”.
Of the direct contract award, he said: “We would have much preferred to do this work via standard contractual mechanisms, but took the view that the state of national emergency meant we could not demand it.”
The case is due to be decided at a one-day hearing on Monday. However, controversy has emerged over the legal costs being incurred by the government.
In a letter last week, the Government Legal Department notified the GLP that its estimated costs for defending the Public First case would be “in the region of £500,000 to £600,000”.
If the GLP loses the case, it could be made to pay those costs in addition to its own. Its director, Jolyon Maugham QC, argues the costs are excessive, pointing to two other recent judicial review cases in which the government’s costs were less than £200,000.
“The government has in-house solicitors and can employ barristers at low rates, but here money has been no object,” he said. “Such costs have a deterrent effect, to scare people off challenging them in the courts; it is another attempt by the government to remove itself from a layer of accountability.”
A Cabinet Office spokesperson denied the accusation, saying the Public First case has involved more work for lawyers, including extensive gathering of evidence and disclosure.
A government spokesperson said: “It is entirely correct that we should defend this legal action, which was brought by the Good Law Project. As with any case, we look to keep legal costs to a minimum.”
Last week a judge, Mrs Justice O’Farrell, gave permission to the GLP to pursue another judicial review claim relating to a government contract with the firm Hanbury Strategy, which also has connections with Cummings and the Conservative party.
The government has also defended that direct award as necessary and proper. O’Farrell stated in her ruling that the judicial review “raises serious issues of public importance that would otherwise not be scrutinised”.
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