Michael Gove lobbied by Covid VIP lane’s biggest winner of PPE contracts

Exclusive: then Cabinet Office minister had phone call with Unispace, which weeks later got the first of £680m worth of deals

Michael Gove was lobbied by the firm that became the single biggest recipient of PPE contracts through the VIP lane in 2020 in the weeks before it was awarded the first of a series of deals worth £680m, new emails reveal.

Emails released by the government show Gove, then a Cabinet Office minister, had a phone call with a founder of Unispace, an office interior design firm, on 24 March 2020 – the day after the first national lockdown was announced.