PPE VIP LANE
COVID PPE VIP Lane — £755M in DHSC payments. Incorporated May 2020, renamed from Unispace Health to Sante Global Dec 2020. Controlled by Australian nationals Gareth & Charles Hales (Plymouth Brethren). £639M circular trading with related entities. Members extracted £185M (profit + tax distributions) over 4 years. Michael Gove called founder day after lockdown; Fullbrook Strategies (lobbyist) later confirmed as Sante client by ACOBA.
£755M PPE procurement via VIP lane
Placed on NHS Supply Chain £6B gloves framework. £731M turnover and £84M profit in first 10 months — 100% distributed to members. Revenue collapsed to £51M in year 2, then below small-company threshold. Now loss-making (FY2024); members injected £2.7M capital.
Fullbrook Strategies lobbying & ACOBA confirmation
Mark Fullbrook lobbied for Sante across 5 quarters (ORCL data). Donated £20K to Conservatives (2019), then served 49 days as Liz Truss Chief of Staff. ACOBA letter (Jan 2023) explicitly names Sante as client with £680M PPE contract. Standard 2-year lobbying ban reduced to 6 months. Co-founded CT Group with Sir Lynton Crosby.
Michael Gove contact — day after lockdown
Phone call to company on 24 March 2020, the day after national lockdown. Company incorporated less than two months later.
Related party network (mostly dissolved)
£639M sold to and £656M purchased from entities under common control in year 1. Network includes Sante Trading Co. (dissolved 2025), Unispace Properties (dissolved 2025), 250 Management Ltd, and Sante Property. Related party activity now near zero.
Contract novation: Ltd → LLP without legal or tax advice
Parliamentary Question (17 Apr 2023): DHSC confirmed it did not seek legal advice on novating the contracts from Unispace Global Ltd (a taxable company) to an LLP — nor on the tax implications. LLP profits pass through to members directly, enabling the Hales brothers (Australian nationals) to extract £92.5M in tax distributions on top of £97M profit. The government let a £755M contract change hands without checking.
Sources: DHSC £25k+ spending data (861 payments), Companies House filing history & accounts, Companies House officer appointments, Guardian investigation (Gove/VIP lane), ORCL lobbying register (Fullbrook Strategies, Atticus Partners), Electoral Commission donations (Fullbrook), Company accounts: FY2021 (full), FY2022 (full), FY2023 (small), FY2024 (small), ACOBA advice letter: gov.uk/government/publications/fullbrook-mark-chief-of-staff-to-the-prime-minister-no10-acoba-advice, Parliamentary Question 120948 (17 Apr 2023, Nick Smith MP / Will Quince MP)