The High Court has found that Matt Hancock broke the law over appointments.

The former UK health secretary didn’t comply with equality duty rules when appointing Conservative peer Dido Harding and Mike Coupe.

The race and equality thinktank the Runnymede Trust won their battle over the two crucial appointments which were made in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic.

Two judges have ruled that appointing Harding as interim executive chair of the National Institute for Health Protection and Coupe as director of testing at NHS test and trace was unlawful.

The Runnymede Trust insisted that there wasn’t fair competition when Hancock made the decisions.

The charity was joined by campaign group the Good Law Project in their fight.

Lord Justice Singh and Mr Justice Swift found that the appointments breached the Public Sector Equality Duty – under section 149 of the Equality Act 2010.

The recruitment processes were proved to favour friends, relative and associates of senior members of government.

The High Court also agreed that making these appointments ignored the consequence for the country’s ethnic minority and disabled communities, who were dying disproportionately from Covid.

The Runnymede Trust argued this as Harding and Coupe weren’t medically trained and didn’t have adequate public administration experience.

The charity criticised Hancock’s action as “simply not good enough.”

In a statement, Dr Halima Begum and Sir Clive Jones, the chief executive of the Runnymede Trust and the chair of Runnymede’s board of trustees, said: “It should not be acceptable to drop our standards during complex health emergencies when countless lives are at stake, in particular the lives of some of our country’s most vulnerable citizens.

“This is when the rule of law most needs to be upheld. This is why the rule of law exists.”

The judges declared the ruling on Tuesday following the high court hearing in December.

The Good Law Project said: “In appointing the wife of Boris Johnson’s Anti-Corruption Tsar John Penrose MP to Chair the National Institute for Health Protection, the government failed to consider the effects on those who, the data shows, are too often shut out of public life.

“The government also ignored its own internal guidance, which requires Ministers to consider how discrimination law will be complied with.”

The High Court also made it clear that the Prime Minister broke the law by appointing Harding as Chair of Test and Trace.

However there was no formal declaration on this.

In a written ruling, Singh and Swift said: “It is the process leading up to the two decisions which has been found by this court to be in breach of the public sector equality duty.

“For those reasons we will grant a declaration to the Runnymede Trust that the secretary of state for health and social care did not comply with the public sector equality duty in relation to the decisions how to appoint Baroness Harding as interim executive chair of the NIHP in August 2020 and Mr Coupe as director of testing for NHSTT in September 2020.”

Begum and Jones believe this sends a “strong message” that the government needs to take their obligation to reduce inequality “far more seriously.”

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