Last month, the Courts refused ‘permission’ on the papers for the judicial review over ‘Operation Moonshot’ the case we were bringing alongside EveryDoctor, Aron Cohen and Dale Vince, founder of Ecotricity. We had applied for an oral ‘renewal’ of our permission application but we have taken the decision to ‘pull’ the case.

We are challenging a number of Government failures to follow proper procurement processes, from focus group contracts handed to allies of Dominic Cummings, to enormous PPE contracts awarded to its VIPs, to antibody contracts awarded in the face of Government’s own legal advice.The Moonshot programme has limited ongoing political salience: Government says it is no longer pursuing the programme. And, alone amongst all our cases, we were not given permission to bring the case on the papers from which one might conclude it is not the easiest case legally. 

Moreover, we are facing enormous costs pressure due to Government’s eye-watering estimated costs. We need to focus our resources where they have the greatest chance for impact. 

Transparency is important to all of us at Good Law Project and if you fund our work you are entitled to know why we have taken this difficult decision. It is never easy to withdraw from a legal challenge but, we believe, it is the right thing to do here. 

Thank you for your ongoing support, 

Good Law Project team

The process of bringing judicial review proceedings is a two stage process. The first stage involves a ‘permission’ decision by the court, designed to weed out weak claims. Usually the court makes a permission decision after having read the papers. If it says ‘no’ at this stage you can ask for an oral hearing on the question whether you should have permission. The second stage, only if you get permission, is a full hearing of your case.

Earlier this week we received the discouraging news that our challenge to the Government’s decision to spend huge sums - now running into the billions - on a testing programme that had not been authorised by Parliament or its own expert body, the National Screening Committee, and which was opposed by much of the scientific community, had been refused permission on the papers. You can - and should - read the permission decision of the Court. 

We continue to think, with proper respect for the Court, that the Court has got this wrong and so we have filed a renewed application to the Court for a judicial review hearing on these grounds. We will let you know when we receive a hearing date for that renewal.

If you fund our work you are entitled to hear any discouraging news as soon as possible. Before today, we had not been refused permission in any of the judicial review cases we had bought connected with the pandemic. Today we were refused permission in our 'Moonshot' challenge. 

We are consulting with our lawyers about whether to 'renew' our application for permission at an oral hearing. We will let you know - and publish the permission decision - as soon as we decide. Meanwhile we have asked Crowdjustice to close the crowdfunding page.

Government has this week been forced to halt its plans to roll out rapid-turnaround Covid-19 test centres across England over Christmas due to widespread concerns from public health experts about the accuracy of the tests. 

Its £100bn “Operation Moonshot” mass-testing programme was supposed to increase the number of tests carried out per day from 430,000 to 10 million by early 2021. But data from the mass testing pilot in Liverpool this month has revealed that the rapid-turnaround tests missed half of cases detected by standard Covid tests. 

This is not only a phenomenal waste of public money, it is an enormous risk to public health.

If rapid tests miss half of all cases the virus will spread via people who think they've got the all-clear, but are actually infected. Jon Deeks, a professor of biostatistics and the head of the test evaluation group at Birmingham University, has described the tests as “not fit for purpose” and “dangerous”.

Government continues to refuse to come clean about how or why spending decisions are being made on its mass testing programme and it is deploying every possible tactic to delay and obfuscate in our judicial review claim. 

In its amended Grounds of Resistance, Government does not even attempt to argue that its direct awarding of these contracts was lawful. It also continues to refuse our request to disclose the documents which record the basis of its decision not to seek the expert advice of its own specialist advisory body, the National Screening Committee (“the NSC”). It’s hard for us to imagine we would be in this position if they consulted the NSC. 

The Government’s argument is that its mass testing programme does not constitute a “screening” programme, and therefore it was not required to obtain and take into account the advice of the NSC. We don’t think that’s true. But don’t take it from me, read the expert take down of the Government’s argument in the new witness statement from Dr Angela Raffle, one of the UK’s leading mass testing experts. 

You can read more in our full response and my further witness statement. 

We will not let Government off the hook. Billions of public money has already been spent on failing tests, with no accountability. We will pursue the truth through the courts.  

We have now issued judicial review proceedings challenging the ‘Operation Moonshot’, We are proud to bring this important challenge alongside EveryDoctor, Dale Vince and Ecotricity, and Aron Cohen of diagnostics.ai.

For weeks now the Government has refused to provide answers to simple questions around the programme for rapid turnaround testing, but its own documents reveal that work is already underway and that the programme could cost £100billion or more. 

Despite the potentially enormous commitment of public funds, Government will not disclose any information about what contracts they have already entered into. Our challenge is to the way in which they chose some rather odd counterparties - a familiar narrative to those of you who have been following the PPE scandal - and their failure to consult their own expert body, the National Screen Committee. We also have profound concerns that consent was never sought from Parliament for this absolutely mindblowing spend.

At its heart, this is a modest and unambitious call for the bare bones of simple governance. What makes the case remarkable is the staggering sums involved - and the vital public health interest in getting it right.

The ‘Operation Moonshot’, Government’s grand plan to develop a rapid turnaround testing programme, has predictably fizzled out into a damp squib. 

In response to legal action by Good Law Project, Dale Vince, AI Diagnostics and EveryDoctor, the Government has quietly agreed that ‘Operation Moonshot’ will be absorbed into the existing Test and Trace programme. They have also abandoned plans to spend £100 billion, a figure first revealed in the Government’s own leaked documents, on the project. 

It’s a far cry from Boris Johnson’s grandstanding in Parliament just a matter of weeks ago and more proof of the mess this Government is making of the UK’s testing programme. 

But call it what you like - ‘Operation Moonshot’ or Test and Trace - the Government continues to refuse to answer some really rather basic questions we have been asking for some weeks about their plans for a mass testing programme. Our lawyers have written to Government yet again to press for transparency: 

• Why were contracts for this programme awarded without any advertisement or competitive tender process? 

• Why did the Government fail to consult their own experts, the National Screening Committee over the plans for rapid testing? 

• Will tests delivered by ‘Operation Moonshot’ be free of charge, or will the public be forced to pay, as suggested by Head of Test and Trace Dido Harding?

Unless we get satisfactory answers we will - have no doubt - issue proceedings.

The basic problems with Operation Moonshot - and they are universal to everything this Government procures - are around transparency and accountability. Government is treating the taxpayer as the enemy, not entitled to know why and with whom these vast sums are being spent. We believe that is wrong - we believe it is accountable to the taxpayer for these vast sums - and we will do whatever we can to deliver that accountability. 

On 24th September, lawyers acting on behalf of Good Law Project, EveryDoctor, and Dale Vince’s Ecotricity wrote to Government with two simple requests. We asked whether they had already awarded contracts in connection with the secretive £100bn+ ‘Operation Moonshot’ and asked them to agree not to enter into any new contracts until we had had the opportunity to consider the supposed lawfulness of their ‘Moonshot’. 

Government’s reply, which you can read here, is utterly inadequate. In the words of our legal team, ‘these are carefully chosen words that leave the current position completely unclear’. They failed to answer meaningfully whether they have entered into any contracts in regard to ‘Operation Moonshot’, and they have not agreed not to enter into any new contracts.

We are left to glean what we can from leaks to the press and (perhaps unintentionally) illuminating comments on private webinars like Dido Harding’s to the CBI, who disclosed Government’s secret plan to charge the public for Operation Moonshot tests. The implication that vast sums of public money are being used to advance commercial interests and establish a two-tier NHS, with better healthcare for those who can pay, raises further serious concerns about the lawfulness of the Moonshot project. Add into the mix suggestions of nepotism and significant conflicts of interest – with Boris Johnson’s brother, Max, appointed as an adviser to a company shooting for Moonshot riches – and you can understand why legal action is so critical.

Government appears intent on keeping us in the dark about their £100 billion shot in the dark. But we are not letting up. Our legal team continues to push for more comprehensive answers from Government. If they are not forthcoming, we will sue.