Michael Gove was lobbied by the firm that became the single biggest recipient of PPE contracts through the VIP lane in 2020 in the weeks before it was awarded the first of a series of deals worth £680m, new emails reveal.
Emails released by the government show Gove, then a Cabinet Office minister, had a phone call with a founder of Unispace, an office interior design firm, on 24 March 2020 – the day after the first national lockdown was announced.
Unispace was at that point controlled by the Australian businessman Gareth Hales – who is the son of the global leader of the Plymouth Brethren Christian sect, Bruce D Hales – and another church member, Anthony Hazell.
Firms linked to Plymouth Brethren figures overall won more than £2bn of UK testing and PPE contracts during the pandemic, the Open and Candid blog has calculated. The Plymouth Brethren Christian sect has about 50,000 members worldwide and follows a doctrine of separation from the outside world.
The emails show a “founder” of Unispace, whose name is redacted, spoke to Gove and followed up with an email later that day outlining his offer, and saying he was “praying fervently for all men and for you and the Conservative party at this difficult time”. After another email, Gove replied: “Thank you [name redacted], we will follow up!”
Gove’s office subsequently forwarded an email from the Unispace founder to the office of Matt Hancock, the then health secretary, which directed the request through the Cabinet Office’s Covid inbox.
The Cabinet Office said Unispace also approached the government’s commercial function with a second offer in mid-April, and this is what led to it getting put into the VIP lane and subsequently winning the £680m of contracts. The first contract, worth £239.6m, was awarded on 20 April with another worth £114m awarded a week later. The Cabinet Office stressed that ministers made no decisions on procurement during the pandemic.
The government refused to be drawn on how Gove had come to speak to Unispace’s founder directly at the height of the pandemic, and whether they had been corresponding on the minister’s private email account.
The correspondence, with names redacted, was obtained by the Good Law Project.
The Cabinet Office describes the source of Unispace’s referral as “GCF COVID-19 Enquiries mailbox, Cabinet Office”. GCF refers to the Government Commercial Function, a cross-government procurement network.
Ministers were not involved in the decisions to award contracts to firms placed in the VIP lane, but the process has been criticised for making it more likely that firms with contacts among Conservative ministers and government figures won lucrative deals.
A Cabinet Office spokesperson said: “Unispace directly contacted the Government Commercial Function who referred the offer to the High Priority Lane. Ministers had no involvement in these procurement decisions.
“In the height of the pandemic, we had to act swiftly to procure PPE, competing in a global market where demand massively outstripped supply.
“Potential suppliers often passed on offers of PPE to MPs, civil servants and ministers – and these offers were then passed on to professional procurement specialists for assessment, with due diligence carried out on all companies in advance of procurement and every company subjected to the same checks.”
The revelation also adds to the links between Gove and several recipients of the most controversial deals processed through the VIP lane during the pandemic. He was behind the referral of David Meller, a Conservative donor who had personally backed his leadership campaign. Meller’s design firm won six PPE supply contracts worth £164m.
Gove was also mentioned in correspondence from Michelle Mone to another Cabinet Office minister in which she was offering to supply PPE “through my team in Hong Kong”, saying “Michael Gove has asked to urgently contact you”. Mone is subject to a National Crime Agency investigation and Lords standards commissioner investigation over the supply of PPE.
Unispace won £680m of PPE contracts between April and August 2020. It was controlled by Hales and Hazell, before the design business of the company was sold to a Hong Kong buyer and the PPE contracts were transferred to another firm called Santé Global LLP in 2021.
Santé Global, whose partners include Gareth Hales and another brother, Charles Hales, is now in dispute with the UK government over another contract to provide lateral flow tests, which it says was wrongly terminated. One of Santé’s advisers has been Mark Fullbrook, a Tory strategist and the former chief of staff to Liz Truss, although it is understood he is not currently retained by the firm.
Santé Global did not reply to a request for comment.
