 We've had some good news on the vaccine and medical science looks like it could ultimately save us from this pandemic That's a good thing because our political class certainly can't from late lockdowns to fudge testing stats Our government's response to COVID has been an outright failure But for some it's work worked out just fine But who you ask of course their friends their friends have done pretty good Out of the last six catastrophic months when it comes to government policy So there was a great investigation in the Sunday times this weekend which found the government had awarded 1.5 billion pounds of taxpayer money to companies linked to the conservative party during the coronavirus pandemic Of these firms none were prominent government suppliers before this year So 1.5 billion pounds to their mates and their mates who worked in industries Which aren't really related to what they were being contracted to do looks quite suspicious to begin with and when we go Into the details it remains very suspicious only more suspicious So I'm not expecting procurement processes between government and private firms to be you know something that you have that much familiarity with to be honest before this pandemic Never did I but a couple of Fundamentals which are important to remember as we go through this story Which is that when a contract is given to a private provider There are sort of two fundamental conditions that are normally met and from the government So one is they must be advertised and so you know The the process by which that contract is going to be given out has to be transparent And you have to have an opportunity to apply for it if you don't happen to be friends with someone in the government And there is also a legal requirement of the government to publish details of awarded contracts within 30 days Now during the pandemic neither of these things has happened. This is all background We're going to tell you the specifics in a moment Ministers have used emergency procedures to award work directly And again many of these went to their mates So the Sunday Times and which is the article we're using for much of this section worth reading And they try to be sympathetic to the government on breaking the rules I've just explained to you so they write this is a world in which ministers have turned to friends with links to the Conservatives because of a mixture of trust convenience and a panicked need to deliver rather than a desire to benefit themselves financially the end result However is arguably similar friends of the Conservatives have played a central role in responding to the pandemic securing high profile positions and Contracts along the way this pattern of conduct became visible in May We've written in lockdown when Boris Johnson and the health secretary Matt Hancock turned to trusted contacts to run parts of the pandemic response This was all done in a panic It was done in a difficult situation You can see why you wouldn't go through the proper normal channels when you've got doctors and nurses You know saying look we can't do our jobs because we don't have proper PPE You can imagine you don't say oh what you've got for 30 days to apply to become a provider of PPE You can see why they just say you know we need to sign this contract with you this evening so that we can get it as soon as possible That will make sense The problem is when you go into the details of what's Happening it has very little to do it seems with people just you know working through a difficult situation in the best possible way Often you know people are just behaving in a fairly appalling fashion and we're going to introduce you to some of the worst cases now So I'm hoping we can get up George Pascoe Watson So he's one of the big characters in all of this and so he is chairman of Portland communications Which is a lobbying firm that represents pharmaceutical companies such as Pfizer and weapons manufacturers and banks such as Barclays and HSBC And it also has a number of Tory advisors on its board He was also the former political editor of the Sun News, but you can get an impression of the politics of this guy Now during the pandemic Pascoe Watson was appointed by the Department of Health and Social Care as an advisor though This wasn't announced now You say there's no excuse for that not to be announced being in a rush or being in a high stress situation doesn't mean you shouldn't tell You know Tell public authorities who you've employed anyway Let's go to what's written up about this guy's role Pascoe Watson participated in daily strategic discussions chaired by Lord Bethel a hereditary peer and former Lobbyist who serves as test and trace minister for six months Bethel 53 was a surprise appointment in March having chaired Matt Hancock's leadership campaign in 2019 and giving a £5,000 donation Hancock the health secretary and Baroness Harding the head of test and trace are Understood to have joined calls including Pascoe Watson and senior officials about how to communicate announcements and policy So you've got this guy who is a former political editor at the Sun and works at a PR Agency where lots of Tory sit on the board and now with no announcement There's no public Admission of this he's sitting in on on phone calls with some of the most important people In the the government response to this pandemic Lord Bethel who serves as the test and trace minister and then Dido Harding and Matt Hancock who I'm sure you you know about It gets worse because not only is this person In government meetings and it's a secret kind of suspicious but this guy who is A boss basically at Portland communications was releasing Private information he was getting in these meetings to people to clients of Portland communications So he works for a communications company where you're a you're a corporate client You go to him to sort out your communications He's emailing you inside information About government policy when it comes to coronavirus before the public or media know about it now some examples You like me probably only found out about the current lockdown late on the night of the 30th of October when it leaked to the press Or in Johnson's press conference on the 31st of October. Remember it was Halloween and that was when we found out We couldn't leave the house for a month But if you were a client of Portland communications, you would have found out two days earlier So this is incredibly important public information, which is going to people who pay An advertising agency essentially a communications agency to get that information It's going out to them before it goes out to the public before it goes out to people in the NHS They also got some information. We still haven't been told So there is an email which was about tier two restrictions in London This was on the 15th of October and the official position is that it would be reviewed Fought nightly so when Matt Hancock announced this restriction system He said we'll be reviewing every two weeks whether or not London in this case should stay in tier two This guy Pasco Watson emails his clients and says the decision makers have told me personally that spring is likely to be the first opportunity to lift the restrictions So we've got here someone who is accessing those meetings. It's not publicly advertised that they're accessing those meetings They are someone who sort of moves in Tory circles And now they're using the information from those meetings to tell their private clients stuff that we don't know as members of the public Stuff that you know leaders in the NHS don't know But you can find out if you are a client of one of you know, someone who moves in Tory circles all It's nasty We're gonna go through some more figures in the democracy and I'm gonna go to you Ashford for your comments on all of this But these are some of the big names. So we're gonna go to Dido Harding She is a former telecoms boss and wife of a conservative MP She was appointed to run test and trace and which was announced in a tweet by health secretary Matt Hancock She was also given a peerage by Cameron She also goes horse-riding with Matt Hancock. So married to an MP friends of Matt Hancock She's not really from a public health background and she gets appointed without any sort of advertising process to lead test and trace Around the same time that she's appointed Kate Bingham is appointed to another leading job She's appointed to run the vaccine task force incredibly important job. Just like I'm leading NHS test and trace now Just like Dido Harding. She's also married to a Tory MP Not only that she is a family friend of Boris Johnson and Boris Johnson when he decided She should have the job. He gave her a personal call asking her to come on board So again, this wasn't advertised. He was just like, I'll get my I'll get my friend Kate Bingham to do it He calls her ask her to do it. Her response is funny So this is from the Sunday Times according to a speech that Bingham 55 gave to a group of US venture capitalists another theme there She responded to Johnson's offer by saying I'm not a vaccine expert. Why should I be the right person? She obviously got the job. I say it's relevant that she was speaking to US venture capitalists there because just like Pasco Watson She has also been pretty goddamn irresponsible with the position of authority. She has found herself in so she has also been given out Sensitive information to people who have paid for the privilege So in her case, she shared information to investors about the vaccines the government were interested in incredibly important Information if you're an investor which companies are the government interested in investing in she gave out all of this Information to people who'd paid 200 pound ahead or 200 dollars ahead and to take part in a particular conference so you've got more people profiting from You know public information from the public vaccine response. We've got two more to go through Lord Feldman So he is a former chairman of the Conservative Party He runs a lobbying firm used to play tennis With David Cameron and he was quietly appointed as an unpaid advisor again lots of people that are unpaid advisor Which I think is part of the morrow. I think they think well, I'm not paid for it I might as well make a profit from it on the side He was appointed as an unpaid advisor to Lord Beffle and that was never formally announced and now we need to introduce you to Lord Beffle who's Lord Beffle and so he is a hereditary peer and nightclub Baron turned health minister I'm as we've already mentioned he gave money and chaired the health secretary Matt Hancock's 2019 Tory leadership campaign So it was a prize when he got appointed by Matt Hancock because he didn't have much Experience to take on the role of minister for test and trace But the connection he did have to Matt Hancock is that he'd given five grand to his leadership campaign I find it astonishing how cheap it is to buy influence with these people Not that I've got a spare five grand, but you know what I mean to be at the top of government. It seems surprising That's all it takes Lord Felman is an ex Tory chair He was appointed to assist this guy a Tory peer and donor to Matt Hancock to work with industry during the pandemic And we got one more because Feldman sat in on a phone conversation between Beffle and Tory donor David Mellor And this is the real icing on the cake. So you've got a Meeting between Feldman Beffle and David Mellor You've got Tory ex Tory chairman Tory donor and now this guy who's again a Tory donor and his firm Mellor design A design firm has been awarded 163 million pounds of PPE contracts And the connection here is that most of those donations from Mellor came when Feldman was party chair Party chair is responsible for fundraising. So you've got this this connection of people who are all very You know intertwined with the history of the Conservative Party Lots of them donors to the Conservative Party and suddenly you've got all of them in these zoom calls responsible for spending Millions and billions of pounds Giving out sort of privileged sensitive information left right and centre to their clients and the whole thing just just stinks the thing worth Focusing on is the fact that 1.5 billion pounds has been spent by by the government to people They have personal connections with who don't have any experience providing the things they've been paid to provide In any other country you'd call this corruption And I think that's just the first thing we need to say any other country you would call this corruption And yet the media in this country is so It's like a beaten dog, which is internalised the violent logic of its owner It's so scared of losing access that they're refusing to call things for what they are So you get these stories which end up being nowhere near as big as they ought to be This is the kind of thing which should you know lead to resignations sacking an inquiry and you know the Hounding as some of these key figures out of public life But the media consistently You know pulls its punches with regards to these kinds of stories There's a sense of well, there must have just been kind of mistake I don't think she could have meant to pay herself these outrageous sums of money Or I don't think he could have meant to have you know given a contract worth millions to his old, you know drinking buddy Um, and I think that that's a problem I think that that's one of the reasons why these stories don't have the kind of cut through That they ought to and you know the story of corruption and sleaze. It's an old one. Um, but I think that we've got A media climate which is least equipped to handle it the other thing To note is that Relatively early on in the pandemic, you know, I'm talking about late april and may stories were emerging Of billions of pounds worth of state contracts being given out without a proper tender process And so what that means is that normally when you have a state contract being put out There's got to be some element of competition So companies put in different kinds Uh of bids saying how much they'll do for how much money in the state supposedly is able to get the best deal through that coronavirus became A pretext and an opportunity to just let the piggies directly At the trough, right? So you've got this huge transfer of wealth from public to private hands Which has also resulted in the parcelization of our healthcare infrastructure most notably with test and trace You've got incredible sums of money being Handed out to companies which have absolutely no expertise or Background in providing healthcare support and manufacturing PPE or whatever it is. Do you remember how much we all laughed with? When chris grayling handed out A contract to a company which didn't actually have any fairies 14 million pound contract. Do you remember how ridiculous that sounded? Now it's billions of pounds everywhere for people who have nothing to do with the thing they've been paid to produce And I think that the problem is is that unless there's a real reckoning and I've got an idea of how that reckoning should go Um or lay it out. Is that your free point plan? How does the reckoning go? Basically, I think that this should be a moment like phone hacking Right in a way that it led to leveson phone hacking was that this kind of you know In some way it was what paul mason always dreamed of was a sort of strategic alliance between the left and the center And it did have some consequences If not all the kinds of consequences that we wanted and I think that anti-corruption It could actually be a really strong place For the left and for liberals to find some shared terrain shared campaigning objectives The reason why I don't hold my breath that that's going to happen is that right now the center is still too convinced with You know sealing Corbinism in a tomb and then burying that tomb at the bottom of the deepest trench of the atlantic ocean And I think with that set of priorities You're not going to necessarily see the kind of work being done Around these issues that that you need because the media is not going to do it They're not going to do it And so I think that means that you are going to have to have some kind of grassroots campaigning effort Um towards making it a big story and I just don't think Uh, I don't think anyone's in the place to make that happen. Unfortunately I mean, we should say I mean, I totally agree that I mean if you look at the broadcast media commentary on this I don't think Matt Hancock got asked any questions about this at the daily briefing Um, but I mean, obviously we're taking this story Or we're we're getting a lot of the detail from this story from the sunday times who I mean politically aren't aligned with us But one thing they do have is quite well funded journalists, which means they can put some time into investigations Especially the sunday times. I think that the normal times doesn't bother quite so much Which leads me to saying That if you want us to do the same kind of investigations that these big multi billion companies can do And that's precisely why we really want you to go to support dot of our media dot com donate the equivalent of one hour's wage a month So we can start doing these investigations as well