The court said the govt had shown “apparent bias” in awarding quite 560,000 pounds ($794,000) to Public First to check popular opinion on the government’s response to the coronavirus pandemic.
The Good Law Project, a campaign group, brought a review against the govt , saying the contract was awarded with none competitive tenders within the early stages of the pandemic.
Finola O’Farrell, a supreme court judge, said the govt was entitled to award the contract because the work was needed.
But she said the failure to think about any research firms “would lead a fair-minded and informed observer to conclude that there was a true possibility, or a true danger, that the decision-maker was biased”.
The government argued that there was no time to run a traditional competitive selection process.
Cummings said he had been more concerned with trying to save lots of lives than ensuring all decisions taken during the primary wave of the pandemic were lawful within the eyes of the court.
“On this basis the courts shd rule that a lot of 2020 decisions were similarly ‘unlawful’ as I & the cupboard Secretary repeatedly told officials ‘focus on imminent threats to lives/destruction, not process/lawyers/Potemkin paper trails,” he said during a tweet.
The National Audit Office said last year there had been a scarcity of transparency and a failure to elucidate why certain suppliers were chosen, or how any conflict of interest was addressed , in procurement deals between March and therefore the end of July worth about 18 billion pounds ($25.5 billion).
Opposition politicians have accused the govt of running a “chumocracy” with contracts, including for the acquisition of what clothed to be unusable personal protective equipment, and appointments made to those with family or business links to those in power.
After Tuesday’s ruling, Jolyon Maugham, founding father of the great Law Project, said the govt should check out proposals to enhance procurement and stop wasting taxpayers’ money.
The ruling is more of a symbolic victory because the judge didn’t make the choice on the idea of actual bias, which might be a criminal offence.
Public First is travel by James Frayne and Rachel Wolf, both of whom previously worked with Cummings and therefore the Cabinet Office minister, Michael Gove. Cummings quit as Johnson’s chief adviser late last year. Gove remains in office.
Angela Rayner, the deputy leader of the opposition Labour Party , wrote to the prime minister to involve an investigation into whether Gove broke the ministerial code.
The Cabinet Office said during a statement that the problems raised in court had been addressed and there was “no suggestion of actual bias”.
A spokesperson for Public First said it had been pleased with the work it did within the early stages of the pandemic and therefore the judge found that weak internal processes gave rise to the looks of bias.