Unpeeling the Fluff - Layer by Layer - Part 2
The investigation of 9/4000+ government Covid 19 contracts
In Failed Covid Contracts, we provided examples of contracts awarded to various bodies by sundry governmental agencies during the madness of 2020-21.
Failed Covid Contracts
On June 2, the UK’s HM Treasury published, to little media attention, a report revealing the multibillion-pound price British taxpayers paid for the reckless handling of Covid contracts.
We used Contract Finder, a helpful tool that identified nine of the most atypical contracts we could find. They all have some common features. High value, all together £249,283,153 of our money, lack of clarity as to what the tender was about, all issued during the panicky 2020-21 period and, most of all, lack of visible deliverables.
In other words: what did we get for a quarter of a billion? How did Joe or Jane Taxpayer benefit from all of this kerfuffle?We crafted nine FOI requests related to the nine tenders, asking the same question in slightly different ways: what did we receive for our money?
Let’s be clear on one point: this auditing should not be left to two old geezers. Parliament, the National Audit Office and single citizens should demand to know how the cash has been spent.
When Carl first spotted the list of contracts, we went to an MSM outlet offering them evidence to start an investigation. We soon realised that they were asking us to do the spade work while they could write up the latest colour change of the Chancellor’s hair.
So we pushed off our wheelchairs and totted it up as one more example of the decline of journalism.
In this series, we keep you informed about our efforts to hold these bodies accountable for their actions. Each request is sent one or two days apart to minimise the risk of conflation by the governmental body of separate requests into one “too big to handle”. We number them 1 to 9. Any answers (we shall be so lucky) or subsequent substantive activity (so, not receipts) will be numbered 2a, 2b and so on.