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The UK government is facing legal action over Boris Johnson’s “moonshot” project, which could involve spending up to £ 100bn in an attempt to increase Covid-19’s testing capacity to 10 million per day.
Health Secretary Matt Hancock and Cabinet Office Minister Michael Gove are named in a case alleging that the project, as described in the leaked documents, is illegal because it ignores scientific evidence, involves private contracts potentially huge that cannot be tendered and violate the government’s own value-for-money rules.
The project has been widely criticized as a misdirected effort when, between September 3-9, only 571,400 people were tested for infection in England on the NHS and in community settings, according to official figures. Community testing has become slower, and the average time taken to obtain a result at local testing sites has increased from 24 to 35 hours.
Supporters of the project say it is the kind of ambitious thinking necessary to allow life to return to normal until an effective vaccine can be implemented.
The legal action is the latest in a series of challenges targeting the government’s handling of the Covid crisis by the Good Law Project, a non-profit membership body that has issued procedures on the award of contracts for personal protective equipment.
Now he wants a judicial review of the Moonshot plan, claiming that the government should have consulted the National Detection Committee, which advises on mass testing and screening programs, and that the possibility of the program generating large numbers of false positives is at risk. of “personal and economic damages”. to tens of thousands of people ”. It states that private contracts must be tendered publicly.
Leaked documents obtained by the British Medical Journal and The Guardian showed that the accounting firm Deloitte had been identified as a key partner in the project, along with potential partners such as G4S, Serco, Boots, Sainsbury’s, AstraZeneca, GSK and Smith and Nephew. The project promises “a huge new operational infrastructure” with tests available in pharmacies, schools and workplaces, as well as in healthcare settings.
A prior action letter sent to government attorneys cites concerns that ministers are effectively “gambling unprecedented amounts of public money on technology that does not exist.”
It reads: “To our knowledge, no public consultation has taken place regarding this decision to approve and commit £ 100 billion of public money to the Moonshot Project and no documents have been released recording the decision-making process that led to the decision. ” by the accused, or otherwise released into the public domain. At present, it is not clear (and there is no transparency) as to what considerations and evidence the defendants have or not taken into account when making the decision (s) “
The move could remove government documents on decision-making around Moonshot, HM Treasury’s involvement in approving plans for spending, and the extent to which companies that said they were involved initiated contract proposals.
Maugham said: “This is a staggering sum of money, a generation-sized debt mill. However, we do not know anything about who has made the decision to spend it, or with what safeguards, or with whom, or why with them. There is a meaning above all [being] a bet made at the whim of a single, unelected Svengali.
“What we do know is that all the experts (Sage, the Royal Statistical Society, the National Screening Committee, the World Health Organization, all of them) have serious concerns about whether this is the right thing to do.”
The Department of Health and Welfare and the Cabinet Office have been contacted for comment.
