A barrister was yesterday forced to make a rare apology for falsely claiming he had won a court case against Matt Hancock.
Jolyon Maugham, QC blamed being ‘under-staffed’ when a Twitter user pointed out that his campaign group the Good Law Project (GLP) had incorrectly claimed victory.
On Tuesday ex-health secretary Mr Hancock’s appointment of Tory peer Dido Harding as head of the National Institute for Health Protection was deemed unlawful by the High Court.
Equality think-tank the Runnymede Trust won its case after two judges considered arguments at a hearing in December.
The GLP joined the trust – arguing that the Government had not adopted an ‘open’ process when making appointments to posts ‘critical to the pandemic response’ – but its claim was dismissed.
Yesterday Mr Maugham insisted that the GLP had not said ‘that “we” won’. ‘We said that Johnson and Hancock broke the law. And they did,’ he wrote on Twitter.
But solicitor Ty Rees-Davies replied to his tweets saying: ‘The email I received from GLP had the subject line “Breaking: We won” ’ – forcing Mr Maugham to apologise.
On Tuesday ex-health secretary Mr Hancock’s appointment of Tory peer Dido Harding as head of the National Institute for Health Protection was deemed unlawful by the High Court
He said: ‘This is a fair point – and I apologise. I did not know of it when I tweeted. We are under-staffed at the moment at a senior level and a huge amount of the burden is falling on me: More than I can realistically be...
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