What the Covid contract ruling against the government really means

The High Court’s ruling that Boris Johnson’s government broke the law by awarding a Covid contract worth £560,000 has been loudly celebrated by campaigners. ‘The Government’s handling of pandemic procurement was a kind of institutionalised cronyism,’ said Jolyon Maugham, from the ‘Good Law Project’, which brought the case. But this isn’t quite the victory it is being made out to be.

It’s true that judges did decide that the contract handed to Public First, a communications firm, was unlawful because of a risk of apparent bias. But the Court rejected two of the three things the Project complained about. It also refused to quash, or end, the contract.

So was the government right to hand a contract to a firm which had connections with cabinet minister Michael Gove and Boris’s former adviser Dominic Cummings?

The government was wrong not to consult other companies, the judge decided. But the judge did not say the government was corrupt in making its decision

For judges deliberating on this question, they encounter an issue: the problem with ‘apparent bias’ is that it is fundamentally not real.