favours to those with the ear of the people in power, one rule for them and a different rule for us holds particular dangers for mrjohnson. when both the favours and the rules involve covid, the mix becomes toxic. on wednesday, a judge ruled a vip lane for covid contracts unlawful, and the prime minister apologised for attending during lockdown a drinks do at number10. jeffrey, you may well be losing track of the number of parties and social events that appear to have taken place in downing street during one or other of the lockdowns. i certainly have. but how perilous is the situation now for the prime minister, do you think? conventional wisdom has been that a bit like donald trump, borisjohnson is teflon, meaning that things just don t stick to him and i think until now, certainly when he was mayor of london, you know, he could make these mistakes, he could hang from a wire and make fun of it and people would be on his side all that kind ofjovialjoking managed to cover a lot.
welcome to all of you. good to have you with us again. levelling up, the idea of opening up opportunities to those left behind by decades of political neglect gave british conservatives a landslide election victory under boris johnson s leadership. so anything that smacks of the old politics, favours to those with the ear of the people in power, one rule for them and a different role for us holds particular dangers for mrjohnson. when both the favours and the rules involve covid, the mix becomes toxic. on wednesday, a judge ruled a vip lane for covid contracts unlawful, and the prime minister apologised for attending during lockdown a drinks do at number ten. jeffrey, you may well be losing track of the number of parties and social events that appear to have taken place in downing street during one or other of the lockdowns. i certainly have. but how perilous is the situation now for the prime minister, do you think? conventional wisdom has been
the high court has ruled that the government s use of a so called vip lane to award contracts for ppe personal protective equipment to two companies during the first wave of the pandemic was unlawful. the department of health agreed deals worth almost £600 million with a pest control firm and a hedge fund. our special correspondent lucy manning is here. what more can you tell is about this? it is about the way the government spent taxpayers money on protective equipment for staff in hospitals. for more than a year, we have reported on gowns and masks that can t be used in the nhs. this particular case was, as you said about the vip lane. what it meant was during the height of the pandemic, if you are a company and you had any contacts with ministers, mps, civil servants, you could go on the vip lane and it meant your bid would get considered earlier. it would get considered earlier. it would get considered earlier. it would get looked at a bit earlier
than other firms. two campaign groups complain that this was unfair. thejudge agreed and said the vip lane was unlawful. ayanda capital and pestfix were put on it, they got deals of hundreds of millions of pounds and the judge found they were given preferential treatment by being on that vip lane. a bit of a caveat, as always with court cases, the judge also found that they didn t get to the contracts because they were on the vip lane,, was likely they would have got those contracts anyway. so both sides claiming success with this case, but not a good look for the government that their scheme has been found to be unlawful. luca; been found to be unlawful. lucy mannini , been found to be unlawful. lucy manning, thank been found to be unlawful. lucy manning, thank you. french police have arrested a suspect in connection with the unsolved murder of a british family and a french cyclist in the alps in 2012. saad al hilli, his wife iqbal, her mother, suhaila al allaf, and cyclist sylvai
a vip lane for covid contracts unlawful, and the prime minister apologised for attending during lockdown a drinks do at number ten. jeffrey, you may well be losing track of the number of parties and social events that appear to have taken place in downing street during one or other of the lockdowns. i certainly have. but how perilous is the situation now for the prime minister, do you think? conventional wisdom has been a bit like donald trump, borisjohnson is teflon, meaning that things just don t stick to him and i think until now, when he was mayor of london, you know, he could make these mistakes, he could hang from a wire and make fun of it and people would be on his side all that kind ofjovialjoking managed to cover a lot. it feels now like there s been this kind of inflection point and people are seeing the real boris and he does not have answers and the country has problems and he s not solving them, so whether or not he survives, i don t think. it s dangerous to get a crysta