Mr Gove’s claim that “the court found that there was no actual bias” is wrong.

9 Jul 2021 | Full Fact's weekly news
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FACT CHECK
Was Michael Gove right about court ruling over bias in contracts?

During an appearance on Sky News, Minister for the Cabinet Office and Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster Michael Gove was asked about a recent ruling at the High Court on the government’s decision to award a £560,000 contract to marketing agency Public First during the pandemic. The agency is run by former colleagues of both Mr Gove and Dominic Cummings, the former chief adviser to the Prime Minister.

In the interview, Mr Gove claimed that “the court found that there was no actual bias in the decision that was taken by others to award this contract [...] there was no breach of the ministerial code.”

That’s wrong. Michael Gove was moving the goalposts in talking about actual bias. The court was asked to determine whether the award of the contract was unlawful because of “apparent bias”.

The judgment explicitly states that there was no suggestion of actual bias. It was not an issue that the court was asked to address so they did not make any finding about whether there was or wasn’t actual bias.

However, the judge held that the decision making process which led to the award of the contract did give rise to “apparent bias”, and so was unlawful.

The Cabinet Office has said there will be no investigation into whether there was a breach of the ministerial code as Michael Gove was not personally involved in the awarding of the contract.
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Following the Prime Minister's unlocking announcement, we analyse the Covid figures and resolve confusion about the effectiveness of face masks.
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FACT CHECK
Video of man reporting Covid-19 crimes to police is full of misinformation ([link removed])

Many of our readers have asked us to check claims in a video on Facebook of a man filming himself in a police station making a complaint about Covid-19 vaccines.

The video is over 30 minutes long, but we have looked at the main claims he makes, including reports suggesting Covid-19 vaccines have caused a 2,000% increase in miscarriages.

There’s no evidence miscarriages are being caused by the vaccine. You would expect the number of miscarriages following vaccination to increase as more younger people of childbearing age, a proportion of whom may have a miscarriage, become eligible to get vaccinated.

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FACT CHECK
Why school testing data doesn’t tell the whole story ([link removed])

On the Today programme last week, shadow schools minister Kate Green claimed that 80% of schoolchildren are not doing coronavirus tests. A similar claim was made in a letter sent to the education secretary.

Since early March, pupils in secondary schools and further education colleges have been asked to take two lateral flow device tests per week to stop the spread of Covid in schools.

However, the data Ms Green refers to just looks at the number of tests recorded, not the number of tests done (which may be much higher), so can’t be used to make this claim. In fact, the Department for Health and Social Care told Full Fact it knows many negative test results are not being reported.

Given pupils are asked to be tested twice a week, you can’t really use the figures available to talk about the proportion of pupils being tested (though if we did have those figures, they would be lower and seem to support Labour’s point even more).
Tests reported vs. tests conducted ([link removed])
MORE FACT CHECKS
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