Dominic Cummings has told a judge that he did not ask for a company run by his “friends” to be awarded a lucrative government contract, adding that he would “never do such a thing”.
The controversial former aide to Boris Johnson was defending the award of the contract to Public First after a campaign group complained of “apparent bias” and took legal action.
The Good Law Project has begun a High Court fight with the Cabinet Office after complaining about the way the contract was awarded to a company with links to Cummings, following the start of the coronavirus crisis nearly a year ago.
Ministers are fighting the claim and Cummings outlined the reasoning behind the contract award in a written witness statement, seen by Justice O’Farrell.
A barrister representing the Good Law Project on Monday told Justice O’Farrell that Public First was awarded the contract because Cummings, then chief adviser to Johnson, “wanted” them to have it.
But Cummings said as he had been a special adviser he was “not allowed to direct civil servants” – but added that, as a result of his suggestion, he “expected people to hire Public First”.
He said the nature of his role was that, sometimes, people took what he said as “an instruction”, a “reasonable inference” as people assumed he was “often speaking for the prime minister”.
Jason Coppel QC told the judge at a virtual High Court hearing that “no other provider was considered”.
He said more than £500,000 had been spent and told that the judge that it was “not strictly necessary” to award the contract to Public First without competition.
Cummings said Britain had been facing an emergency because of the coronavirus crisis, and “the award of the contract without delay” was “entirely justified”, PA Media reports.
“Obviously I did not request Public First be brought in because they were my friends,” said Cummings.
“I would never do such a thing.”
Cummings said he was friends with people involved with Public First, including director James Frayne, but he said he had not met him since 2016.
“James Frayne and I worked on the euro campaign 20 years ago, other political issues, and set up the campaign to fight the proposed formation of a regional assembly in north-east England in 2004,” he said.
“I have talked to them extensively about focus groups and public opinion over many years.
“I knew from my experience that Public First were very good at running focus groups and that its key staff had thought extensively about how people who usually ignore most news and political communication think and might be influenced.
“I knew that I could rely on them to make an extra effort, beyond what they were paid to do.
“I knew they would give us honest information unlike many companies in this sector.
“Very few companies in this field are competent – almost none are very competent, honest and reliable.”
Cummings told the judge that the work done by Public First was “worth more than every penny spent”.
“We were in a once-a-century pandemic and many thousands of pounds here was trivial if it helped us save lives and minimise economic destruction”
- Dominic Cummings
He added: “I was under the impression that, provided we were acting genuinely in light of an emergency, that the courts later on would understand that we could not spend weeks on procurement in the normal way when we had hours to act and save lives.”
On the value of the contract, he said: “A few people did raise the question of how we could justify this as value for money.
“I responded that this was not the normal world. We were in a once-a-century pandemic and many thousands of pounds here was trivial if it helped us save lives and minimise economic destruction.
“It is important to stress that this exercise was totally non-political: I did not seek, nor was I interested in, anything to do with what other political parties were doing or saying — this exercise was only about the public health aspects of Covid.”
He added: “The country was facing an unprecedented national emergency.
“Thousands of lives were at stake, hundreds of billions of pounds were at stake.
“The extra money spent on doubling the focus groups and polling was essentially irrelevant in those circumstances.”