Four of Boris Johnson’s most senior staff suggested that Cabinet Office civil servants should hire a company owned by Conservative party allies, one of whom co-wrote the Tories’ 2019 election manifesto. Within weeks of Johnson’s election victory in December 2019, civil servants received recommendations to hire Public First to research voter opinions on the key manifesto promise to “level up” provincial towns. The prime minister’s then chief political adviser, Dominic Cummings, director of communications, James Slack, then head of communications at Downing Street, Lee Cain, and director of the No 10 policy unit, Munira Mirza, all suggested Public First for government work. Mirza had just co-written the manifesto with Rachel Wolf, who owns and runs Public First with her husband, James Frayne. Wolf has previously worked as an adviser to Johnson, Cummings and the Cabinet Office minister Michael Gove, and since the election she has urged the government to focus on making small improvements in provincial towns. Frayne has also previously worked alongside Cummings and Gove and has done extensive research on the politics of provincial towns and how the Conservatives could win working-class voters from Labour. The Cabinet Office commissioned Public First in early February 2020 to conduct the research, asking working-class people in towns what they understood by “levelling up”. Public First was paid £90,000, which was less than the threshold requiring an open competitive tender for the work. The Cabinet Office did not enter into a written contract with the company. The revelations that Cummings, Mirza, Slack and Cain recommended Public First for work are contained in documents disclosed by the Cabinet Office in response to a legal challenge against the decision to award the company a second contract, for Covid-19 opinion research. They are likely to fuel accusations that Johnson’s government has operated a “chumocracy”, awarding contracts to favoured, connected people and companies. The disclosures also raise questions about whether taxpayer money has been spent on a party political project. The second contract, awarded on 3 March without a competitive tender when the Cabinet Office asked Public First to change focus and research public opinion about the Covid-19 pandemic, is being challenged by the Good Law Project. When the Guardian and openDemocracy first reported on that second Covid-19 contract, the Cabinet Office said it was “nonsense” to suggest that Frayne and Wolf’s long associations with Cummings and Gove had been a factor leading to them being hired. However, in his statement for the legal action, Cummings confirmed that Frayne and Wolf were longtime friends, and said he had recommended the company because he knew and highly rated their work. The first recommendation of Public First was sent by the No 10 press office on 7 January, saying “James and Dom” – whom the Cabinet Office civil servant took to be Slack and Cummings – wanted focus groups on how the country should “mark/celebrate” Brexit on 31 January 2020. “They suggested you use Rachel Wolf, or whichever group is quickest,” the email said. Civil servants ignored that request because the Cabinet Office already had another company, Jigsaw, contracted for such work. Mirza next mentioned Public First to Alex Aiken, an executive director for government communication. In his statement for the legal challenge, Aiken said he and Mirza had “an informal conversation in the corridor at No 10 about broadening the use of research companies”. He said it was “not unusual” for ministers or officials to want the list of companies refreshed. Aiken said Cain then told him in a 22 January meeting that they needed urgent research to inform an agenda-setting speech by Johnson on “levelling up, global Britain, transport and infrastructure etc.” Cain had been “somewhat concerned” about the Cabinet Office’s regular research providers, Aiken said. “Lee’s view was that it might be better to go with someone familiar with the government’s agenda such as Public First.” Aiken said that as he was trying to build trust with Johnson’s administration, “I was prepared to work with the grain of what was being asked for”. After Aiken informed his staff that No 10 had suggested Public First, one of the civil servants joked in an internal email: “Tory party research company tests Tory party narrative on public money.” Another said in her statement: “I did have some concerns about the credibility of using Public First and the way the request had come to us. I had not experienced a request to work with a particular company before this request was relayed to us.”
Both added, however, that Public First did have the required expertise and did good-quality work. Frayne set out in his proposal for the “levelling up” research that the focus was “all groups in leave-voting, less affluent, Midlands and northern towns.” He suggested Mansfield, Walsall, Bishop Auckland, Rotherham, Oldham and Bridgend, with participants classed as lower middle class or working class, the overwhelming majority having just voted Conservative. Special advisers told civil servants on 28 January that Gove had reviewed the plan, and asked also for focus groups in Scotland, with “swing voters/persuadables”, although he wanted different pollsters to do that. Asked by the Guardian if this focus group work was a political project aimed at informing Conservative party strategy on strengthening its vote in target “red wall” towns, a spokesperson said: “The Cabinet Office cannot and does not undertake party political polling.” Frayne also denied that the research was party political. “The government’s job is to implement the manifesto, full stop. Our role was to recruit groups affected by pledged policy. Politics was an irrelevance. What mattered was a sample that reflected provincial England.” The government has denied any impropriety in the awarding of the first contract, and defended itself in the legal action against the Good Law Project’s claims of “apparent bias” in the awarding of the second. Mirza and Slack, who are still working at No 10, did not respond to questions. Cain declined to comment. Frayne said his company has “working relationships” with people in Labour and the Liberal Democrats as well as the Tories, and that Public First was an obvious candidate for the research. He said Wolf had worked for three months unpaid as a volunteer on the Conservatives’ election campaign and manifesto. Asked if she had discussed with Gove, Mirza, Slack, Cummings or Cain the possibilities of Public First being commissioned for work after the election, Frayne said: “The senior team at Public First talk to people all the time about what they should do politically.” He added: “These conversations happen regularly. We didn’t make any sort of formal pitch for work, but it would be natural to think that we know what we’re doing and could pick up a piece of work like this.” Mrs Justice O’Farrell is due to deliver her judgment in the judicial review of the second, Covid-19 contract in the next few weeks.