Yesterday I set out how relationships with political figures in Government could be leveraged by suppliers to achieve supernormal profits. https://twitter.com/JolyonMaugham/status/1315918126865883136

At the moment I am still focusing on apparent overpayments for IIR facemasks.

This exercise is difficult because Government is - for no good reason - deliberately redacting contracts to remove all transparency over historical per unit prices paid. But sometimes it slips up.

The highest price I have yet seen paid for IIR facemasks was paid in a £69.6m contract with "Uniserve Group."

(The name of the counterparty itself is remarkable given the size of the contract - there is no legal entity called Uniserve Group. Legally, it doesn't exist.)

The price paid to "Uniserve Group" on a contract entered into on 14/4/20 was 87p per unit for 80,000,000 IIR facemasks ( https://www.contractsfinder.service.gov.uk/Notice/Attachment/d19882bf-6984-4e3a-bc96-e303ead5ce3d). This represents a surplus of about 36p per mask over the Government's benchmark price on that date - or a surplus of at least £28.8m.

Although there is no such legal entity, "Uniserve" is well known as a freight company. Its twitter account boasts - as of Friday - of having completed 542 charter flights of PPE. However, this also raises questions as there is no published freight contract with Uniserve.

Raising further questions are Government documents I have seen which mandate the use of Uniserve to transport PPE to the UK - and ask PPE supplies to remove Uniserve freight costs "as these are paid centrally by DHSC."

Supergenerous pricing ('profits' of at least £28.8m on a single £69.6m contract), with a legal entity that does not exist, supplying 542 flights of PPE some or all being under an unlawfully unpublished contract, with other suppliers compelled to use it.

Who is this Uniserve?

What appears to be the group holding company, Uniserve Holdings Limited, is controlled by a Mr Iain Liddell. You can see him here with his local MP, @JuliaLopezMP, who works in, you guessed it, the Cabinet Office. https://www.julialopez.co.uk/news/visiting-upminsters-uniserve

You can also see Mr Liddell (centre) alongside Lewis Hamilton in a news release which boasts of Uniserve being "the official logistics partners of the UK government’s ‘Exporting is Great Campaign‘" ( https://uniserve.co.uk/lewis-hamilton-makes-podium/).

Mr Liddell also held various roles with "Prosperity UK" a prominent lobby group that boasted of "coming together to make Brexit a success" and where he will have rubbed shoulders with a number of prominent pro-Brexit politicians and thought-leaders. https://www.prosperity-uk.com/speakers/ 

Now, for the avoidance of doubt, I do not say the award of hugely generous contract(s) to "Uniserve Group" (whatever that is), and the mandating of Uniserve for freight, and the lack of transparency, is corrupt. I simply say there are very real questions to be answered.