Day: November 16, 2020

Calls are growing for an inquiry into whether lobbyists quietly hired by Downing Street during the early days of coronavirus pandemic used their insider access to help benefit the outside companies that also employ them.

The Sunday Times reports that one of these influential lobbyists, Portland Communciations chair George Pascoe-Watson, sent “advance information about policy to paying clients”.

The allegations surrounding Pascoe-Watson, who was originally hired to work on the NHS test-and-trace scheme, have “reignited” the ongoing dispute over the so-called “Covid chumocracy”, the paper adds.

What are the allegations?

Boris Johnson’s government has “repeatedly faced criticism for alleged cronyism” and for “blurring the lines between the public and private sectors” in its response to the coronavirus crisis, The Guardian says.

According to The Sunday Times, “whole organisations have achieved remarkable penetration within Whitehall during the pandemic, often under the cloak of secrecy”.

The paper points to Portland Communications, a lobbying firm with clients including HSBC, Pfizer and BAE Systems that employs “a number of former Tory advisors”. Boss Pascoe-Watson was “parachuted into government”. in March, “without any announcement”, to advise on strategy and communications, the paper continues.

A former political editor of The Sun, he reportedly “participated in their daily calls, prompting civil servants to raise concerns about appropriate channels”. But “nothing happened”, according to a source, and Pascoe-Watson “made the most of his access” to give his clients advance notice about lockdown policy and other government plans.

The row has contributed to growing criticism of the government’s alleged lack of transparency in its hiring processes.

Former Tory chair Andrew Feldman was also “quietly given a job advising a health minister despite potential conflicts of interest with clients of the lobbying firm that he runs”, openDemocracy reports.

The Tory peer is currently managing director of PR consultancy Tulchan, but his separate advisory role, which is supported by a “small civil service private office”, was “never formally announced by the government”, the investigative site says.

Who stands to benefit?

While “almost any price is worth paying to constrain and mitigate” the Covid outbreak, No. 10 has “let standards fall” during its response, says The Telegraph’s assistant editor Jeremy Warner.

The government is accused “of scandalously suspending normal competitive tendering processes, vastly overpaying for many goods and services, and in a number of cases outright cronyism”, Warner writes.

Pascoe-Watson was unpaid in his government advisory role, but used his inside access to give his business partners a jump on the lockdown restrictions.

On 15 October, for example, he emailed clients saying he had been “privately advised” that restrictions in London launched that day would continue until spring 2021, The Sunday Times reports.

“Decision-makers have told me personally,” he wrote.

Meanwhile, Tory peer, James O’Shaughnessy, was both a paid “external adviser” to the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) and a paid Portland adviser until August, the paper adds. In May, O’Shaughnessy took part in a call with Bethell and Boston Consulting Group (BCG), a Portland client that has gone on to receive £21m in Covid-19 contracts.

And the reaction?

In the wake of the allegations surrounding Pascoe-Watson, Labour deputy leader Angela Rayner today tweeted that she has written to Cabinet Secretary Simon Case demanding an urgent inquiry into “how lobbyists and their clients benefited from this vital information before the public knew, as the rest of the country waited anxiously for government announcements about lockdown… and whether they could see their families, friends and loved ones”.

The Scottish National Party (SNP) is also calling for an inquiry into the “rampant cronyism”.

“There must be a public inquiry into the scandalous way that public money, jobs and privileged access have been handed out by the Tory government during this crisis,” said Kirsten Oswald, the party’s deputy leader in Westminster.

A spokesperson for the Department of Health and Social Care said that as part of the pandemic response, “we rightly have drawn on the expertise of a number of private sector partners who provided advice and expertise to assist in the government’s vital work”.

“As a result of public and private sector organisations working together at pace, we were able to strengthen our response to the pandemic so we are better prepared for the challenges of the coming months,” the spokesperson added.

The Week’s daily round-up highlights the five best opinion pieces from across the British and international media, with excerpts from each.

1. Clare Foges in The Times

on Cummings leaving No. 10

Brexiteers vanish as Brexit dawn looms

“I am afraid I do not share the hopes that Dominic Cummings’s departure from No 10 will lead to a successful ‘reset’ of government, because the old problem will remain: a prime minister who does not really know what he thinks, who has fleeting enthusiasms but not big ideas, whose ambition to occupy the office was not driven by what he would do once he got there but a feeling that it would be a grand thing to do. Indeed, I think Cummings’s exit is quite possibly a bad thing, as in the absence of any similarly driven characters it will inevitably lead to a slide in the government’s ambitions. Yes, much is maddening about Cummings: the hypocrisy of an establishment insider who attacks establishment insiders; the chutzpah of claiming that a 250-mile drive was akin to a Specsavers check-up; the arrogance which assumes that the 99.9 per cent of us who aren’t well versed in Descartes or quantum physics are mediocrities. But at least he had ambition.”

2. Frank Bruni in The New York Times

on selling your soul

Was it worth it, Jared and Ivanka?

“Just five short years ago Jared and Ivanka were dinner-party royalty here in Manhattan. It’s that kind of place. They had money, they had youth, they had celebrity. They were thin. I’m told that their manners were impeccable, so you’d never know that his father was an actual felon and her father a de facto one. Besides, you can’t hold family against someone, can you? We don’t choose how we’re born. But from then on, we do make choices, and we’re accountable for those. They chose to tether their fortunes to her father’s, chose to go along for the ride, chose to see how far it could take them, because what if it took them all the way? What if Ivanka became the first female president, something that Manhattan acquaintances of hers assured me that she fantasized about, a giddy possibility that her father floated out loud.”

3. Helen Lewis in The Atlantic

on feminist aristocrats

When discrimination targets the privileged

“The reasons behind male primogeniture were, for centuries, obvious to everyone. Most titles came with a grand estate: a castle, tenant farms, perhaps a summer house or two. These stately homes cost a fortune to run, so keeping the title and all the assets bundled together made sense. The eldest son inherited the lot. The danger of passing on titles and wealth to an eldest daughter was that she might marry into another noble house, uniting both sets of titles and land. From the monarch’s point of view, that was dangerous, potentially allowing aristocratic families to become an alternative power base to the throne. This all made perfect sense in 1620, or even 1720. But it’s harder to understand in 2020, when Britain has had two female prime ministers, 50 years of equal pay under the law, and its female monarchs are generally agreed to have a better batting average than their male counterparts.”

4. John King in The Independent

on the end of terrace loyalists.

Do clubs even need spectators now? Coronavirus and the death of football as we know it

“It is sometime in the future and the biggest football clubs in London have merged to create London United. The story is the same in Manchester, Liverpool and Glasgow. Wasteful rivalries have been overcome, replaced by a more lucrative unity. The Premier League has morphed into a Europe-wide super-league and London are due to play Madrid City. Matches may take place in empty stadiums, but the digital experience is a huge improvement on the old, highly dangerous way of consuming the product. A range of atmospheres is included in every TV package, while a little extra buys the full immersive option. The London-Madrid clash is already a bestseller. Football has never felt more alive.”

5. Gerhard Sonnleitner on Deutsche Welle

on the greatest of all time

Lewis Hamilton or Michael Schumacher? There’s no contest

“Sometimes it seems as though Hamilton, like someone out for a leisurely Sunday drive, is completely relaxed and without a challenge. The record winner’s superiority has taken the tension out of Formula 1 following title after title. And even after the seventh World Championship, everything points to more to come. Hamilton may be the best racing driver of his time. But his racing victories are not reminiscent of the passionate battles of Schumacher, who became a legend because, in competition with other outstanding drivers, truly made the impossible possible as a relentless competitor, team player and human being.”