The pandemic justified urgency in decision-making, but the government uses it to evade scrutiny and shirk accountability
The pandemic has driven much activity that used to be conducted in public view into private spaces. Politics is no exception. Covid safety regulations prevent MPs packing the Commons, diminishing the chamber’s power to hold ministers to account. In its early stages, the emergency required some suspension of partisanship. Politics was reduced to the spectacle of the prime minister, flanked by scientific advisers, dispensing instructions on television. The early scramble to fight the virus also apparently required the abandonment of some Whitehall procurement protocol. Vital equipment was needed at short notice. That is the context in which Boris Johnson assured Sir James Dyson that certain tax liabilities could be waived if the inventor’s staff relocated from Singapore to produce hospital ventilators in the UK. The guarantee was made in an exchange of private text messages that only become public this week.
The prime minister has defended his action on the grounds that he was “moving heaven and earth” to procure life-saving equipment. That dodges the issue of whether access to the PM’s phone number should be the basis for deciding how the rules apply, and to whom. Other deserving suppliers had no such privileges.
