Oh dear. The Babe Ruth of the bar has blundered once again. Jolyon Maugham, the kimono-cladded KC, has been raging about PPE contracts during Covid for years now. One company that has particularly attracted his ire is Meller Designs Ltd, formerly co-owned by businessman David Meller.
During the pandemic, it was awarded six PPE supply contracts worth £164 million, following a referral through the ‘high priority lane’ or ‘VIP lane’. Maugham and his Good Law Project (GLP) have claimed that PPE referred through this route ‘was on average 80 per cent more expensive.’
In a December 2023 article for the Guardian, the GLP claimed that internal government documents showed that the unit price paid for items under VIP lane contracts was up to four times higher than average.
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