Boris Johnson’s government has been criticised for handing out more taxpayer money to a friendly PR firm to help clean up its “disastrous” handling of the A-level grades crisis, openDemocracy can reveal today.
In August, the exams regulator (Ofqal) awarded a contract without competition to Public First, a small research agency owned by two close associates of Cabinet Minister Michael Gove and Dominic Cummings, Johnson’s controversial chief advisor.
The job was to provide “urgent communications support” in the midst of the summer’s exams results crisis.
