Before Michael Saiger won at least six PPE contracts worth in excess of £200 million from the United Kingdom’s Department Of Health And Social Care (DHSC) last year, he designed stylish gold and silver bracelets. Based in Miami and set up in 2009, Saiger’s jewellery brand is called Miansai, a combination of the first letters of the founder’s full name: Michael (“Mi”), Andrew (“an”) and Saiger (“sai”). One of Saiger’s bestselling pieces is the Nexus rope bracelet in sterling silver and nylon. Today, it is on sale through the Miansai website for £50.
Saiger looks younger than his 35 years. He’s slight, with a narrow frame not unlike that of a rookie Formula One racing driver. He has sharp, backlit eyes, a neat low fade with side-parting haircut and a perfectly manicured five-day beard. As we sit down to talk, the strain of running multiple businesses and supporting a young, expanding family shows a little under his eyes; a few days beforehand he and his wife, R
18 Apr 2021
UK Health Secretary Matt Hancock owns a large number of shares in a company which has been awarded National Health Service contracts. But according to the Department of Health and Social Care (the ministry he heads), he has behaved “entirely properly”.
Has he, though? Has he really? If so then the state’s definition of acceptable behaviour for government ministers and the general public’s definition thereof must be at least a million miles apart.
True it may be that by the Augean standards of government procurement scandals this one is relatively small beer.
It goes like this: Hancock has a 15 per cent shareholding in his sister’s company Topwood Ltd, which specialises in waste disposal services. This year it won a £300,000 contract from NHS Wales and it also has ‘approved status’ to provide services to NHS England too, though so far it hasn’t won any contracts.
22 Feb 2021
A High Court judge has ruled that Health Secretary Matt Hancock acted unlawfully in failing to publish multi-billion-pound COVID-19 government contracts within the 30-day period required by law.
This is a story that ought to be dominating every front page and leading every BBC news bulletin: the sums of taxpayers’ money which have been squandered in this procurement fiasco are truly scandalous; so shocking, indeed, that under normal circumstances this would bring an immediate end to the career of the minister responsible.
At least £18 billion worth of contracts for protective equipment has been handed out by the government in what the
Alex Bourne probed by Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency
His company Hinpack has supplied NHS with millions of NHS Covid tests
A law project took legal action against Department of Health and Social Care
The Government is required by law to publish a contract award notice
The Good Law Project argued there had been a dismal failure to comply
Matt Hancock unlawfully failed to publish details of billions of pounds worth of coronavirus-related contracts, the High Court has ruled.
The Good Law Project took legal action against the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) for its wholesale failure to disclose details of contracts agreed during the Covid-19 pandemic.
The Government is required by law to publish a contract award notice within 30 days of the award of any contracts for public goods or services worth more than £120,000.
At a hearing earlier this month, the Good Law Project and three MPs - Labour s Debbie Abrahams, the Green Party s Caroline Lucas and Liberal Democrat Layla Moran - argued there had been a dismal failure by the DHSC to comply with the obligation.