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Public procurement: He knew he was right…

23 July 2021 / Nicholas Dobson
Issue: 7942 / Categories: Features , Public
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Nicholas Dobson reports on Cabinet Office procurement decisions found unlawful through apparent bias
  • A fair-minded and informed observer would conclude that there was apparent bias by the Cabinet Office when it appointed a research agency without considering other potential competitors.

The prime minister’s former adviser, Dominic Cummings, is not noted for excessive constraint or diffidence in his public pronouncements. So, commenting on vaccine deployment, he tweeted about his ‘rushed instructions on how to change Vaccine Taskforce from another Hancock shitshow to low-friction-fast-decisions success’. Among the instructions was that: ‘…we need treatments by autumn, not powerpoints and meetings for months’ and ‘no usual bullshit and processes…’.

Cummings was consequently quick off the Twitter mark when Mrs Justice O’Farrell in the Technology and Construction Court found on 9 June 2021 in R (on the application of Good Law Project) v Minister for the Cabinet Office [2021] EWHC 1569 (TCC) that his recommended Cabinet Office appointment of Public First (PF)—an agency specialising in opinion research on complex public policy issues—was unlawful through

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NEWS
The Supreme Court issued a landmark judgment in July that overturned the convictions of Tom Hayes and Carlo Palombo, once poster boys of the Libor and Euribor scandal. In NLJ this week, Neil Swift of Peters & Peters considers what the ruling means for financial law enforcement
Small law firms want to embrace technology but feel lost in a maze of jargon, costs and compliance fears, writes Aisling O’Connell of the Solicitors Regulation Authority in this week's NLJ
Charles Pigott of Mills & Reeve reports on Haynes v Thomson, the first judicial application of the Supreme Court’s For Women Scotland ruling in a discrimination claim, in this week's NLJ
Bea Rossetto of the National Pro Bono Centre makes the case for ‘General Practice Pro Bono’—using core legal skills to deliver life-changing support, without the need for niche expertise—in this week's NLJ
Charlie Mercer and Astrid Gillam of Stewarts crunch the numbers on civil fraud claims in the English courts, in this week's NLJ. New data shows civil fraud claims rising steadily since 2014, with the King’s Bench Division overtaking the Commercial Court as the forum of choice for lower-value disputes
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