VIP Lane: The Real Story of the Epidemic of Cronyism and Corruption During Covid
In his explosive forthcoming book, Russell Scott reveals the full story of how Britain's political elite turned a global crisis into a highly lucrative business opportunity
NOW A MAJOR ITV DOCUMENTARY
The Covid Contracts: Follow the Money – Watch it on Sunday 21 September 10.20pm on ITV1
There is a growing narrative in the UK that all politicians are cut from the same cloth and the political parties they are affiliated with cannot be trusted to be honest. A recent survey found that 58% of those surveyed in the UK “almost never” trust our MPs to tell the truth when in a “tight corner” – a 22% increase since the pandemic started.
Shortly after taking power, the new Labour government has found itself in the centre of a political storm over the PM Keir Starmer’s vulnerability to accept free hospitality in the form of Premier League football matches and tickets to see Taylor Swift’s sell-out world tour.
I do not intend to downplay the public anger over the MPs accepting thousands of pounds worth of freebies, especially as the vast majority of us are still feeling the pinch of this country’s never ending austerity drive. However, to understand the reason for the sharp fall in confidence in our political system over the past 5 years, one needs to take a step back from ‘Swiftgate’, rewind the clocks to 2020 and examine closely the previous Conservative Government’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic and the industrial-scale cronyism and political scandals that consumed the then PM, Boris Johnson’s time in Number 10.
Between March 2020 and March 2022, the UK government spent £311 billion on “pandemic-related support measures”. The equivalent of handing £4,631 to every person in the UK, that figure could rise to as much as £373 billion, according to the Office for Budget Responsibility.
A staggering £96.7 billion was spent by the Department of Social Care (DHSC), who led on the flagship vaccination, PPE and Test and Trace programmes. At least £15 billion was wasted procuring goods from dubious sources – often purchasing products that were not fit for purpose and excessively inflated in price. That £15 billion wasted on unusable equipment could pay the annual salary of 441,000 NHS nurses.
The Conservative Government established a VIP lane that allowed companies with direct links to the ruling Conservative Party to jump the queue and land Government contracts valued in the billions of pounds to provide medical equipment. The UK was the only nation in the world to introduce such a controversial and unlawful back channel during the pandemic.
The Government under Rishi Sunak’s watch made the decision to incinerate billions of items of unusable PPE and to date, no VIP lane companies have been found guilty of any criminal wrongdoing or faced the consequences of plundering vast sums from the public purse – a track record that continues to anger many.
Millions of Brits are now grappling with the financial pressures of the current “cost of living” crisis. Many are struggling to pay their mortgages, rent, bills and groceries – a striking juxtaposition when compared to the individuals who grossly profited from the Government’s unlawful VIP lane. These individuals are now splashing the cash on private jets, super yachts, stately homes and luxurious villas – a position many of the ‘VIP lane’ recipients found themselves in not by merit, but because of the political connections they had within the governing Conservative Party.
A reported 227,000 people died in the UK as a result of Covid-19. Heroic NHS front-line staff routinely went into battle against an unknown virus, putting their health on the line to protect our loved ones – often without adequate PPE to keep them safe. Many paid the ultimate price, a fact that shouldn’t be forgotten when we also talk about the cronyism that overshadowed the Government during a crucial moment in our history.
This book hopes to provide some justice to the people who gave everything to keep us safe.
Week after week in summer 2020 and through autumn, a familiar pattern was emerging – the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) were starting to publish details of huge public sector contracts being awarded without the normal competitive tendering rules. These contracts were often valued in excess of £100 million and awarded to people with links back to one particular political party – the Tories.
Take for example Steve Dechan. Prior to the pandemic he ran a small, loss-making firm distributing medical devices. In May 2020 Mr Dechan’s company P14 Medical Ltd was awarded a £156m contract by the DHSC to supply medical gowns manufactured in China. In previous weeks he had already secured another eye-watering contract from the same Government department – a £120 million deal to supply face shields. Dechan was also a Conservative Party councillor and eventual donor to, unsurprisingly, the Conservative and Unionist Party. Off the back of the lucrative PPE deals Dechan purchased a £1.5 million mansion set within 100 acres of land in the Cotswold countryside. Not bad for the boss of a company that was, pre-pandemic, losing money.
In June 2020, Meller Designs, a firm that at the time was selling beauty products, was awarded two contracts by the DHSC with a contract value totalling £81.8 million. These deals were to supply hand sanitiser and face masks. The same company also received a £65.8 million contract to supply face masks in the preceding month. In total, by June 2020 Meller Designs, again, a beauty products firm, had picked up contracts valued at £148 million to supply PPE to the British Government. All of the contracts were awarded without formal competition. The owner of the company was David Meller. Meller was and still is a regular donor to the Conservative Party. At the time of writing this book he had contributed £66,013 into the Tories coffers. Meller also personally donated to Michael Gove MP and supported his unsuccessful bid to become leader of the Conservative Party in 2016. The relationship between Meller and Gove was rekindled prior to the PPE contract awards and played a pivotal part of Meller Design’s route to riches off the back of the very lucrative PPE contracts, a subject explored in Chapter 2 of the book.
It wasn’t just prospective PPE suppliers that jumped on the Government’s pandemic gravy train. Medacs Healthcare Plc, a healthcare company ultimately controlled by leading Tory donor and former party chairman, Lord Ashcroft, received a £350 million contract as part of the government’s Covid-19 testing and vaccination rollout. Medacs was, at the time, was a subsidiary of Impellam Group, a FTSE-listed firm whose largest shareholder was Lord Ashcroft, the Belize-based Conservative peer who has donated millions to the party, including more than £175,000 in the year leading up to the contract award. Medacs was criticised in 2019 when a Care Quality Commission report on a homecare service run by the firm was rated “inadequate”.
The regulator found “that the care people received was not safe. The majority of people’s care calls were not delivered at the time they were expected and people gave examples of where this had impacted significantly upon them and the safety of the care that they received.” – This scathing report did not stop the DHSC handing them a £350 million contract just months later.
Public anger towards the Government was building over its handling of procurement during the first wave of the pandemic. The vast majority of the general public had by now, spent months making huge personal sacrifices under difficult emotional and financial circumstances and day after day scandalous examples of huge chunks of the DHSC budget being carved up and distributed to companies with links back to the ruling party were being revealed. At the time Labour MP Rachel Reeves, the then shadow Cabinet minister and now Chancellor of the Exchequer, told me, “People are understandably furious seeing businesses owned and run by the friends and donors of the Tory Party being awarded huge multi-million-pound public contracts throughout this pandemic.”
Serious questions remained unanswered – How was this happening? Surely it couldn’t be a coincidence? How can one find out what’s really going on inside the DHSC and the Cabinet Office?
In October 2020 further clues to help answer these fundamental questions started to be uncovered. Good Law Project, a not-for-profit campaign group based in London and headed up by Jolyon Maugham KC (whom I would later go on to work for) were embroiled in a judicial review with the DHSC over some of its questionable PPE contracts, they had been leaked a cache of documents from within the heart of government. The Good Law Project for the first time revealed details of a special pathway, a secretive procurement channel that designated certain suppliers as “VIPs”. The leaked files also stated in bold text “high profile contacts, require a rapid response” another document requested civil servants provide the so-called VIPs an “expedited response”.
The leak disclosed on Good Law Project’s website and subsequently shared with the Daily Mail seemed to me like just the tip of the iceberg. I felt there was likely more to shine a light on. And now here I sit, typing away on this manuscript after what became a four-year-long investigation that unearthed not one, but two controversial ‘VIP lanes’ and countless examples of cronyism that had roots deep within the heart of Government. This book tells not just my story but also recounts the numerous scandals that defined the last half-decade of the Conservative Party’s reign.
VIP Lane: Cronyism and the Pandemic by Russell Scott is published by Byline Books. Shipping on 1 October
The Covid Contracts: Follow the Money
Watch it on Sunday 21 September 10.20pm on ITV1
This compelling documentary for the BAFTA-winning Exposure strand tells the untold story of how the Government went from having almost no stocks of PPE to having more than could ever possibly be used, and how some companies with little or no track record in supplying PPE or medical tests were given massive contracts and made a killing from Covid. With access to hundreds of previously secret documents, emails and records, the film examines in forensic and comprehensive detail the decision-making which led to billions of pounds of wasted PPE being disposed of, and the failure of the Government’s costly test and trace programme to avoid a further lockdown. As the UK’s Covid-19 inquiry – the most expensive in our history – rumbles on largely unnoticed , the film asks how this all happened, and who was ultimately responsible.
Film Editor: Einav Leshetz Lovatt BFE
Graphics: Ed Emmerson
Associate Producer: Russell Scott
Compliance Producer: Sally Wardle
Produced, Directed & Filmed by Jenna Weiler & Davina Bristow
Executive Producer: Brian Woods
A True Vision production for ITV1 /ITVX
 | A guest post by
|