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Correspondence newly released to Byline Times reveals how former Prime Minister David Cameron helped an old Etonian school friend and former hedge funder get a fast track into the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) advisors at the start of the pandemich.
The friend was Hugh Warrender, who attended Eton with Cameron in the 1980s and who was then representing a South Korean COVID testing firm. After being contacted by Warrender, Cameron introduced him to Lord Feldman, another close friend of Cameron’s, who was working as an advisor to health ministers at the time.
Knightsbridge based consultancy firm, Fin De Guerre Strategies, owned by Warrender, was ultimately unsuccessful in securing the contract for their clients from the DHSC. However, the companies “referral” from Cameron sheds new light on how businesses backed by senior Conservative Party figures were able to circumnavigate the usual procurement process.
Emails released to Byline Times via a Freedom of Information request reveal how within three days of lobbying the former PM, the Fin De Guerre’s offer to supply South Korean produced COVID Tests was emailed directly to Health Minister Lord Bethell.
In the early hour of 3 April 2020, Cameron received an email from representatives of Fin De Guerre, the subject header of the email read: “Need your help — I have a supplier of COVID-19 tests but we can’t contact anyone who replies to offer them.”
The email included a plea to help provide contact details for somebody in government with the “wherewithal to address” their offer to supply COVID tests “seriously”.
Later the same morning, Cameron obliged and forwarded the offer onto Lord Feldman — A Conservative Peer who was also working as an advisor to Matt Hancock and Lord Bethell during the early months of the pandemic.
Cameron told the supplier: “Hi there. Try Andrew Feldman — an old friend of mine and my former party chairman who runs a business but is currently working in the NHS, for Matt Hancock, sorting out various procurements”. Cameron signed off the email “All good wishes. Dc.”
The day after Cameron’s introduction to the Conservative Peer, the supplier emailed Lord Feldman directly on what appears to be his personal email address rather than his official DHSC account to request Feldman give its submission “more prompt attention”.
Remarkably, within three hours Lord Feldman replied: “Thanks for this — you are doing all of the right things. We are getting a lot of offers of tests from South Korea at the moment as well as a huge volume of other offers. My job is to triage many of these offers across testing kits, ventilators, medicines and PPE for DHSC for Matthew Hancock and James Bethell.”
Feldman, described as Cameron’s oldest political friend, passed Fin De Guerre’s COVID testing offer onto Health Minister and fellow Conservative Peer Lord Bethell the next day on 5 April 2020.
Lord Bethell replied within fifteen minutes of receiving the email from Lord Feldman, an email which was given the subject header “referral from David Cameron”.
In his response Lod Bethell complained: “I just had a shocking procurement call. We need to think of ways around procurement.”
Although Fin De Guerre’s attempt to supply COVID Tests to the DHSC appears to have not succeeded, the emails reveal how a supplier with a Conservative Party backed “referral” was able to go from being ignored by civil servants to the front of the queue — all within the space of three days.
It comes after Byline Times revealed how another VIP COVID testing company that supplied hundreds of millions of pounds of unusable COVID Tests saw profits skyrocket to £178 Million after lobbying Lord Bethell in the days before being awarded a lucrative contract from the DHSC.
Primer Design’s turnover jumped by 4,800% after supplying tests that were later deemed “Unfit for public use”.
The DHSC, Cameron, Feldman and Warrender were all approached for comment. None responded by the time this article was published.
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