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Byline Times and The Citizens add up the staggering total value of deals awarded during the Coronavirus pandemic to donors of the Conservative Party
Government contracts worth £881 million have been awarded to individuals who have donated a total of £8.2 million to the Conservative Party in recent years, Byline Times and The Citizens can reveal.
These contracts span across the various projects undertaken by the Government during the Coronavirus pandemic – from the procurement of personal protective equipment (PPE), to the provision of laptops for school children forced to study from home.
There is no evidence that the Government awarded these contracts in direct exchange for the donations; no monthly meeting where ministers assigned departmental work to the highest bidder. Rather, the Conservative Party has promoted the idea of outsourcing public services to private companies in recent decades – an ideology that has been ruthlessly applied during the COVID-19 crisis.
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Private companies therefore see a commercial benefit – supplemented by the Conservatives’ low-tax mantra – to help the party to win power: the donations roll in, the party gets elected, and public sector contracts in turn roll out to the market.
This isn’t a question of wrongdoing on the part of the companies – they are simply acting in their commercial interest. The question is about a system that positively encourages large contributions to political parties from private individuals and firms, yet does not prevent these very same companies from acquiring, if only by coincidence, high-value Government work.
This process has of course been put on steroids during the Coronavirus pandemic, when Government contracts worth some £18 billion have been outsourced to the private sector in less than 12 months.
Here are some of the individuals and firms to have benefitted.
Wol Kolade, Livingbridge
Donations: £678,000
Contracts: £5.9 million
Oluwole ‘Wol’ Kolade is the managing partner of Livingbridge, a global investment company, listed by Companies House as the one “persons with significant control” of Livingbridge EP LLP.
Since 2002, Kolade has made more than 20 personal donations to the Conservative Party, amounting to £678,000. This has included a £10,000 donation in 2019 to Health and Social Care Secretary Matt Hancock, and donations amounting to £39,854 this year.
Kolade is also a member of the elite Conservative ‘Leader’s Group’ dining society – that provides access to senior Tory politicians for large donations. Kolade was one of the most prolific attendees of Leader’s Group meetings between 2013 and 2018, according to openDemocracy, attending 13 events. Membership of this group allowed Kolade to have a private dinner with former Prime Minister Theresa May.
Since August 2018, Kolade has also sat as a non-executive director of NHS Improvement – the body responsible for overseeing NHS trusts. The chair of NHS Improvement is Baroness Dido Harding, who also runs the UK’s COVID-19 ‘Test and Trace’ system.
Livingbridge invests in a large array of companies and it is unclear how much influence is wielded by Kolade over the various projects.
However, since last April, a company linked to Livingbridge, called Efficio, has won COVID-19 contracts worth at least £5.9 million. Efficio describes itself as “the world’s largest procurement consultancy” and has won contracts from the Cabinet Office, the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) and NHS England for a range of critical services, not least supporting the procurement of PPE and testing services, and assisting with the delivery of vaccines.
Companies House records show that Livingbridge holds between 50% and 100% of the shares in Efficio Global Limited – the parent company for the various Efficio subsidiaries. Livingbridge also appears to control a firm called FIS Nominee Limited, which owns all of the ordinary class-A shares in Efficio.
Of the contracts won by Efficio during the Coronavirus pandemic, one has been granted without competition and five have been awarded through a framework agreement. The latter is effectively a shortlist of firms, selected through competition, that are able to bid for Government contracts in a certain field.
Efficio would not comment on the specifics of the awarded contracts but described Livingbridge as “a minority investor in our business”. A spokesperson added: “We are proud to partner with colleagues in the public sector and of the work we have done together during this period of unprecedented national challenge.”
Livingbridge announced on Monday that it has now agreed to sell its stake in Efficio to the company’s management team.
Livingbridge did not respond to Byline Times’ request for comment.
Scott Fletcher, ANS Group
Donations: £240,000
Contracts: £2.5 million
Scott Fletcher founded ANS Group in 1996, as reportedly one of the UK’s “early movers in cloud computing”. While he resigned his ANS directorship in 2016, Fletcher is the owner of Project Daytona Limited, which owns ANS’ parent company, Project Daytona Bidco Limited.
The latest company accounts for ANS Group, for the period up to 31 March 2019, state that the “ultimate and controlling parent” for Project Daytona Limited, and by virtue ANS Group, is a firm called Lowry Trading Limited.
Fletcher is one of two shareholders in Lowry Trading, having founded the company in 2007. The latest ANS Group accounts state that “the company considers Scott Fletcher to be the ultimate controlling party of the company”. The only other director of Lowry Trading is an individual named Stephen Fletcher.
Since 2014, Lowry Trading Limited has donated £240,500 to the Conservative Party. This includes £25,000 to the central party in 2014, £25,000 in 2016, £50,000 in 2017, £37,000 in 2018, £100,000 in 2019 and £3,500 to the local Broxstowe Conservative Party in the same year.
ANS Group has been awarded four contracts for the supply of IT “cloud” services to the DHSC and NHS England since April 2020. ANS Group appears to be providing services to host and maintain the Government’s COVID-19 contact tracing app, seemingly working in conjunction with Amazon Web Services.
In addition, ANS claims that it is working with Microsoft and the ‘Test and Trace’ programme to “help local authorities identify and contain potential outbreaks in places such as workplaces, housing complexes, care homes and schools”.
The firm posted revenues of £50 million last year and has won awards for its work. The contracts awarded to ANS Group have all functioned through a framework agreement.
Neither ANS Group nor Fletcher responded to Byline Times request for comment.
David Meller, Meller Designs
Donations: £60,000
Contracts: £163.5 million
Beginning on 6 May, Meller Designs was awarded a series of DHSC contracts for the supply of PPE. A firm that typically specialises in supplying home and beauty products to high street retailers, including Marks & Spencer, Meller Designs has to date been awarded contracts for the supply of masks and hand sanitiser worth at least £163.5 million.
None of the contracts released so