LONDON (Bywire News) - The government has successfully managed to overturn a court ruling, that stated the way in which it awarded a COVID-19 contract to a public relations company run by associates of Dominic Cummings, the former chief adviser to Boris Johnson, was illegal.
On Tuesday, a Court of Appeal ruling reversed the original decision made back in June, which stated the government showed "apparent bias" by giving over £560,000 to Pubic First, a PR company to help determine public opinion on government response to COVID-19.
The ruling by the appeal court stated that an observer who is fair and well informed wouldn't have decided that failure to carry out comparison exercises when giving away contracts was a reason to call the government biased.
According to the ruling, an observer would have come to the conclusion that in the emergency circumstances imposed by COVID-19, excluding any formal decision-making process was indicative of apparent bias.
James Frayne and Rachel Wolf run Public First and have both previously worked alongside Cummings and senior minister Michael Gove. Cummings resigned from being Boris Johnson's chief adviser in Nov. 2020.
(Reporting by William James; Editing by Kate Holton and Klaudia Fior)