A legal challenge to the government’s awarding of multimillion-dollar sidestream testing contracts that later failed to win regulatory approval has been thrown out by the High Court.
The health and social care secretary’s decision to award three contracts to UK firm Abingdon Health has been the subject of a legal challenge by the Good Law Project (GLP), a campaigning organization which has brought several lawsuits challenging the way the contracts were awarded during the pandemic .
GLP raised a number of grounds why it believed the awarding of the Abingdon contracts was unlawful, including allegations of bias, conflict of interest and a lack of equal treatment and transparency, all of which were rejected.
In a written decision published on Friday, Mr. Justice Waksman said the award evaluation “must include an assumption of market conditions that include (1) the urgent need to develop an effective LFT antibody that can be used to mass home- testing, (2) some uncertainty as to whether this test will be developed in time, and (3) the risk that even if it were, the need for it in very large quantities might disappear. It cannot be said that these are political considerations to be ignored.
He also said that even if any of the grounds were upheld, GLP did not have legal “status” (sufficient interest in the dispute) to entitle it to sue. In reaching his conclusion, he cited the decision in the earlier challenge brought by GLP and the Runnymede Trust to the appointment in August 2020 of fellow Conservative Daido Harding as interim executive chairman of the National Institute for Health Protection, in which GLP also did not was held to be entitled.
In a statement, Abingdon Health said it had received £10.3m from the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) under the three contracts awarded in April, June and August 2020 and now expects to receive a further £1.5 million, which was detained on charges pending the outcome of the judicial review.
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Chris Yates, chief executive of Abingdon Health, said the company had “done the right thing” during the pandemic by responding quickly but had been caught in the “political crossfire”. He added: “We are of course delighted with this decision, but we are extremely disappointed that the reputation and good standing of Abingdon has been called into question by GLP.”
The ruling stated that most of the tests purchased by DHSC from Abingdon had not been used and had expired.
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