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The Department for Health and Social Care has launched a legal challenge against Uniserve for tens of millions of pounds, claiming the company, which has close ties to the Conservative party, supplied 11 million faulty gowns during the pandemic.
The legal action comes as new documents obtained by Byline Times, reveal how Uniserve, and a Conservative MP linked to the company, successfully lobbied ministers to push through the deal, which ultimately left the Government tens of millions of pounds worth of unusable PPE.
The deal was hugely controversial due to the involvement of a Conservative peer and the fact that the firm owns an office complex which houses the constituency office of Conservative Party MP and ex-Cabinet Office minister Julia Lopez.
The company, owned by businessman Iain Liddell, prides itself on being the “UK’s leading logistics & global trade management provider”.
However, despite the company having no track record of supplying PPE to the NHS, they were awarded multiple contracts in 2020 to provide vast quantities of masks, gloves, aprons, face shields and goggles.
Uniserve saw its turnover and profits surge during the pandemic as a result of the contracts, which generated payments of £1.15 billion from the DHSC, up to April 2023.
The contracts, valued at £303 million, were made possible after Conservative peer and Cabinet Office minister, Lord Agnew referred Uniserve onto the so-called ‘VIP lane’ for preferential contracts.
It was subsequently discovered that huge volumes of PPE supplied by Uniserve under these deals were not fit for purpose. According to data obtained by Spotlight on Corruption, 182 million items of PPE supplied by Uniserve, totalling £178.5 million were assigned into the ‘do not supply’ category.
Uniserve was also handed a £572m contract in March 2020 to provide freight services to the DHSC. The deal required the firm to assist the Government in delivering PPE located in China and South-East Asia to the UK and included the management of sea freight arriving at Felixstowe – where container storage was causing a major headache for officials due to the shear volume of PPE ordered by the DHSC.
A spokesperson for Uniserve said they procure products for customers, and had a global network of contacts that specialise in PPE. “We did not actively sell our procurement services to the DHSC, we were asked to help”.
New documents released to Byline Times following a lengthy Freedom of Information battle with the Cabinet Office can reveal the true extent of the political lobbying between Conservative party Ministers and Uniserve in the build-up to the huge VIP lane deals being awarded.
Despite having no track record of supplying PPE, the lucrative deals were awarded to Uniserve without any competition. The company does however share the same address as former Cabinet Office Minister Julia Lopez MP and is based in her constituency.
Liddell and Lopez, who continues to rent an office space from Uniserve, spent years denying they were in contact with each other regarding the PPE deals, in 2020 Uniserve explicitly told reporters at the * Guardian*, “Uniserve or Mr Liddell were never in contact with Julia Lopez regarding bidding for these contracts.” A statement echoed by the then Conservative-controlled Cabinet Office. However in late 2025 the pair finally came clean and admitted that they were in email contact prior to the VIP lane deals being awarded.
Lopez declined to explain to the *Guardian *whether or not she acted on Liddell’s email.
However, for the first time,
Byline Timescan reveal what happened next.
By March 2020 DHSC and Uniserve were already in discussion over the transportation of medical goods, however attention soon turned to the supply of PPE.
Uniserve lobbied Lopez on 02 April 2020, complaining that PPE procurement needed “serious thought” and officials were “taking too long” to deal with his company’s offer.
Remarkably the very next day, on 03 April 2020, Lopez’s ‘Senior Parliamentary Advisor’ escalated Uniserve’s complaint to a fellow Cabinet office minister’s office and health officials.
Lopez’s assistant told officials that “Julia and I have known” Iain Liddell “for a number of years” before continuing to press officials to consider Uniserve’s offer.
Lopez’s team repeated Uniserve’s desire to “escalate it to the top to make sure they are aware of the situation”.
Just 40 minutes later, the Private Secretary to the then Cabinet Minister Lord True picked up the batten and lobbied PPE officials further, stating:
“I have been contacted by the constituency office of Julia Lopez MP who is one of our ministers here (Currently on [redacted] leave). The enquiry relates to Uniserves offer to source PPE which I gather you’re working on. Their MP states that he has had to ship a finite number of products elsewhere. Do you have an update on this particular offer that I can go back to the Minister with please? I am fully sympathetic to the extreme pressure you must be working to but keen we can provide a little info”.
Lord True’s office did not stop there. Three days later on April 6 2020 and again on April 8 2020, the ministers office continued to pressure officials to look at the Uniserve PPE offer, and provide an update for Cabinet Minister Julis Lopez.
The Private Secretary to Lord True pleaded with officials to “help” as Uniserve were being “hanstrung by certification processes” and they needed to get back to Lopez’s office “with a bit more information”.
Less than ten minutes after the latest emails from Lord True’s team, a Cabinet Office officials replied: “these guys are coming into Govt from all sides.( [redacted] cc’d) into your email is dealing with them in an escalation from Penny Mordaunt’s office”. So it is firmly in the system..”
The sustained political pressure from the former Conservative party ministers appeared to pay off and within a few days huge PPE contracts started to flow towards Uniserve via the VIP lane.
On April 13 2020 , just five days after the lobbying efforts from Julia Lopez and Lord True’s offices, health officials handed an £8million contract to supply one million gowns to Uniserve – without any formal competitive tendering process.
However, this contract was eclipsed less than a week later, when the DHSC awarded another deal worth £86.2million to Uniserve, to supply a further 10 million gowns – Again, this contract was awarded without any competition.
Shockingly, Uniserve were paid in full for all 11 million gowns provided via the two VIP lane deals – despite the DHSC eventually confirming they were “unfit” for use and subsequently destroyed without ever being used in the NHS.
It is these two contracts that sit at the heart of the £90m legal action brought by the UK government against Uniserve and yet another reminder of the disastrous consequences of the previous government’s unlawful VIP lane.
Iain Liddell Group Managing Director and Founder of Uniserve told Byline Times:
“Uniserve did not actively sell its procurement services to the DHSC. The Government’s PPE procurement team approached Uniserve because of our unique capabilities, our expertise, and our proven track record. Uniserve was approached directly by the Department of Health and Social Care on 22 March 2020 to support the urgent transportation of critical equipment from China to the UK. That was before the email to Julia Lopez referred to in your questions. Uniserve did not contact Julia Lopez regarding bidding for Covid contracts. Any limited communications with politicians or officials were about process concerns and delay in circumstances where Uniserve was already engaged with DHSC during an unprecedented national emergency. Uniserve had no knowledge at the time of any VIP lane or High Priority Lane, did not seek access to one, and did not understand its engagement with DHSC to be taking place through any politically favoured process. Uniserve denies the allegations made by DHSC in the current proceedings. Those allegations are disputed and should not be presented as findings of fact. Uniserve is proud of the role it played in supporting the country during the pandemic. Public scrutiny is legitimate, but it must be based on a fair and accurate account of the chronology and the facts.”
Julia Lopez MP said “I was on maternity leave during the period in question”
DHSC spokesperson said “We do not comment on active legal cases”
The Cabinet Office was approached for comment.
Five years on, two of the PPE contracts handed to Uniserve via the unlawful VIP lane are at the centre of a huge legal action. In April this year, the UK Government filed papers with the courts and laid out its plans to sue Uniserve for over £90million. The eyewatering sums follow hot on the tail of the DHSC recent high-profile legal victory with PPE Medpro – Another VIP lane PPE supplier with strong links to the Conservative Party, who have been ordered to pay back £122million – although the bill remains unpaid.
The DHSC claim that two huge contracts awarded to Uniserve in April 2020, to supply 11 million gowns for a total value of £90,200,000 were “not fit for their purpose” and couldn’t “lawfully be used and/or marketed as PPE”.
The DHSC argue that the gowns did not have required CE markings and “were not accompanied by any declaration of conformity”. Without this crucial accreditation the gowns were then deemed unfit to be used in the NHS and eventually destroyed.
Furthermore, it’s claimed that Uniserve procured the gown via a manufacturer not “permitted” in the contract agreement between the two parties.
For these reasons, the DHSC argues that Uniserve should re-pay the £90.2million as well as the millions of pounds spent on storing, moving and ultimately destroying the unused PPE.
Uniserve have denied all the allegations, arguing that the gowns did not violate PPE safety regulations.
By December 2020, six months after the last Conservative Government had stood down its controversial PPE procurement channels that operated during the pandemic, at least 14 billion items of PPE remained unused and stored across dozens of warehousing facilities around the country. Circa 5.6 billion items of equipment remained locked away in metal shipping containers.
17,848 shipping containers loaded with circa one million pallets of PPE remained in the country. The astonishing number of containers arriving into the UK crammed full of unwanted PPE had been steadily rising since October 2020. Felixstowe port was in “chaos” partly due to the estimated 11,000 containers full of PPE blocking the quay – ships unable to unload due to the “serious port congestion” were being redirected to other ports.
Officials were desperate to clear the backlog of containers at Felixstowe and in an eight week period between October and December 2020 approximately 8,000 shipping containers were removed from quayside and stored elsewhere. Mountains of multicoloured shipping containers stacked five high began popping up in unusual places – a disused airstrip at Mendlesham Airfield in Suffolk suddenly became home to 1000 containers of PPE, stacks of PPE-laden containers were also spotted at an empty site near Melton railway station, also in Suffolk, and several thousand containers were moved from Felixstowe port to the Port of Ipswich.
There appeared to be little strategy from the Government on the next steps and what were they planned to do with billions of items of PPE stored in 17,848 shipping containers and approximately 50 warehouses. While ministers grappled with the situation, the stockpile of excess equipment procured during the pandemic remained in storage, a decision that would eventually lead to a further £1.4 billion of taxpayer money being wasted.
An analysis of historic spending data, published quarterly by the DHSC, demonstrates the department spent a staggering £1.39 billion on “storage costs” between October 2020 and April 2023. This figure includes the storage of PPE and unused covid tests and ventilators procured during the pandemic. The biggest benefactor of this expenditure was a company called Uniserve Limited, the Essex-based firm was paid a mind-blowing £543.7 million for storage related costs by the DHSC over the same time period.
**Russell Scott is the author VIP Lane: Cronyism and the Pandemic, published by Byline Books. **
