MICHAEL Gove has hit out at a campaign organisation which exposed that he was lobbied by a firm that landed PPE contracts worth some £679 million during the Covid pandemic.
The former minister for the Cabinet Office gave evidence to the UK Covid Inquiry as it continued its investigation into procurement.
During his evidence, Gove lashed out at The Good Law Project and its director Jo Maugham, describing Maugham as a “politically-motivated grifter”.
Gove told the inquiry: “I have a very low opinion of the Good Law Project. I believe that its title is an almost perfect oxymoron. The man who runs it is a politically motivated grifter.”
In February last year, after a six-month long freedom of information battle, The Good Law Project unearthed that Gove was lobbied by Unispace Global Ltd which landed a huge slice of the VIP lane contracts for PPE.
In July 2021, the organisation also revealed that an “eight-stage process” that “every single procurement decision” went through, according to Gove, was not in place until April 2020, meaning contracts awarded before this date avoided this scrutiny.
Also during that year, the UK Government was ruled to have acted unlawfully by awarding a lucrative contract to a company with ties to Dominic Cummings.
Campaigners took legal action against Gove's Cabinet Office over the decision to pay more than £500,000 of taxpayers' money to market research firm Public First, following the start of the coronavirus crisis in March 2020, and questioned the involvement of Cummings.
👀Gove is incredibly rattled and under pressure at this afternoon's covid inquiry hearing. It didn't take long for him to have a pop at us and our director, @JolyonMaugham . Could it be something to do with this by any chance? 🧵https://t.co/jVhbBYy9Dr
— Good Law Project (@GoodLawProject) March 10, 2025
Lawyers representing the Good Law Project said Cummings, Prime Minister Boris Johnson's then-chief adviser, wanted focus group and communications support services work to be given to a company whose bosses were his friends
Ministers, including Gove, and Cummings – who left Downing Street late in 2020 – disputed the Good Law Project's claim.
The judge said in her ruling: "The claimant is entitled to a declaration that the decision of 5 June 2020 to award the contract to Public First gave rise to apparent bias and was unlawful."
The Good Law Project posted on Twitter/X that it felt Gove appeared “rattled” at the inquiry.
Posting a thread of some of the key cases against him, the organisation said: “Gove is incredibly rattled and under pressure at this afternoon's Covid Inquiry hearing.
“It didn't take long for him to have a pop at us and our director, @JolyonMaugham.
“Could it be something to do with this by any chance?”
The group added: “We'll keep rattling the cages of politicians of all parties involved in dodgy dealings.”
