Early Payment

The award of contracts to Meller Designs PPE contracts have been reported on originally by Byline Times, Good Law Project, Open Democracy, The Mirror, The Times, The Guardian & others I am going to throw light on something highly unusual that I believe has been missed up to now.

Meller Designs owner was David Meller. Meller is a Tory party donor & friend of Michael Gove. They were referred via the VIP channel by Michael Gove. It is also reported that Meller contacted Lord Bethell to lobby and speed up the process of contracts award on the 6th April 2020. Meller has many more links to the Tory Party.

Meller Designs were awarded six contracts for masks, gloves & sanitiser. The first awarded on the 26th April 2020, then the 5th May, a further one on the 7th May. They then also received a further 3 contracts in early June. However there is a bit of a kicker to this story!

Remember the phone call with Jim Bethell was on the 6th April 2020, the first contract award was on the 26th April 2020. What I found is that the first payment made by DHSC to Meller Designs was made on 6th April 2020 for £37,752,000, the second payment made by the DHSC to Meller Designs was on 20th April 2020 £4,400,741.

So according to DHSC spending records over £42 million was paid to Meller Designs before the first contract was even awarded! Plus £37 million on the day of the Bethell call.

It is reported that in some instances that the DHSC paid some amounts up front to PPE suppliers. The difference is that those reported payments were made to companies once the contracts were awarded. The initial DHSC payments to Meller Designs were made 19 and 6 days prior to any contract award! 

I have never heard of payments made prior to a contract being award. This is highly under reported and questions remain.