Alan Calderwood

🧵 More than 30 senior Tories named in new Covid PPE ‘VIP lane’ records Democracy For Sale reveals full details of ‘politically connected’ fast track lane for lucrative PPE contracts released after Democracy for Sale reporter's five-year legal battle. By Peter Geoghegan and Jenna Corderoy Eight members of Boris Johnson’s cabinet named in full list of Covid VIP lane referrals. More than 30 senior Conservatives are named in newly released records of companies referred to the government’s controversial Covid PPE ‘VIP lane’ back in 2020, following a five-year fight by Democracy for Sale to force the government to divulge the information. The documents identify hundreds of businesses – and the politicians, ministers, senior civil servants and other figures who recommended them for the ‘VIP lane’ to lucrative government Covid contracts. Among those named are eight members of Boris Johnson’s cabinet, Sarah Ferguson and the banking giant Santander. Four of those cabinet ministers in the documents had not previously been named: then foreign secretary Dominic Raab, justice secretary Robert Buckland, Welsh secretary Simon Hart, and housing secretary Robert Jenrick, who is listed only as a ‘possible’ referrer. Companies referred to the VIP lane were ten times more likely to secure contracts, according to the National Audit Office. Around £1bn of the £1.7bn spent on PPE from VIP suppliers was wasted on supplies later deemed unfit to use. The release of the records brings to an end a fight for transparency that began in February 2021, when now Democracy for Sale reporter Jenna Corderoy submitted a Freedom of Information request seeking the names of every company referred to the so-called ‘VIP lane’ and those who had recommended them. The government resisted disclosure for more than five years. In February 2025, a tribunal ordered it to name the unsuccessful suppliers and rejected its argument that identifying their referrers would cost too much. The Cabinet Office still withheld the referrers’ names until Democracy for Sale appealed to the Information Commissioner’s Office, who ruled last month that they should be disclosed. They were finally published on Thursday. The Cabinet Office has warned that it cannot completely verify the accuracy of the reconstructed referral data, and some individuals are identified only as ‘possible’ referrers. There is no suggestion that making a referral was itself improper. Among other things, the documents show: Raab recommended a Cambridgeshire toy maker who had only a single employee at the start of the pandemic. 'Honest Bob' Jenrick, now Reform UK treasury spokesman, is listed as ‘possibly’ referring an export packing firm. Graham Brady, then chair of the 1922 committee of backbench Tory MPs, referred an interior design company near his Altrincham and Sale West seat. Brady told Democracy for Sale that he had “no recollection of this but given the location, I assume I was passing on an approach from a constituent. I have no involvement with the company and never have had.” Owen Paterson, who later left parliament after a lobbying scandal, referred a Birmingham biotech firm working on pregnancy complications. None of these firms were given contracts. Then health secretary Matt Hancock is named against 27 companies, three of them marked ‘possible’. Former Conservative party chairman Lord Feldman is recorded against 21 (three ‘possible’) and Cabinet Office minister Lord Agnew against 14 (four ‘possible’). Grant Shapps and Michael Gove also referred firms, including, in Gove’s case, Meller Designs, run by donor David Meller, which received £164m in Covid contracts. Sarah Ferguson, then the Duchess of York and ex-wife of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, referred Biz Trading Ltd, a small London-based pharmaceutical company that was dissolved in 2022, according to Companies House. Continued... democracyforsale.substack.co…