Event Lighting Services and Greenlight Television were paid £65,441 between them to broadcast the government’s daily Covid-19 briefings.

The briefings, which were at first daily from March 24, decreased in frequency as the threat from Covid-19 decreased.

A Freedom of Information request, submitted by an unknown person, asked a series of questions including the total cost, which companies were paid, why the government chose not to use its own IT specialists to operate the broadcasts and if the questions asked by journalists were in any way vetted.

In respect of the final question, the Cabinet Office said: ’There was no vetting whatsoever of questions from journalists. Questions were asked "live" and were unknown to the spokespeople at the podium or to officials beforehand.’

The Cabinet Office said that when the briefings began, each company had to attend in person and set up its equipment each day. As lockdown was enforced on residents, this was no longer viable so it was decided to use one single feed which the media companies could then broadcast.

Issues with quality were also raised as not all questions were being picked up by all the media and this led to frustration that information was not being heard by as many people as possible.

The FoI response added: ’An accessible, reliable and professional approach to the press conference format was deemed essential.

’It was clear from the outset that the briefings were likely to continue for some time and that they were likely to grow in prominence as a trusted and up to date source of information for the community on the island’s response to the pandemic.’

While no tender process appears to have been carried out, ELS and Greenlight were chosen to provide the service ’so as not to favour one outlet over another’, a decision

The Cabinet Office said the two companies were chosen because they had the ’appropriate equipment, expertise, capability and capacity to provide a professional and fit for purpose broadcast service of the quality required for television, radio and simultaneous online video streaming across multiple platforms and outlets’.