Rt Hon Nick Thomas-Symonds MP
Minister for the Cabinet Office
10 Feb 2026
Dear Minister,
We are writing to you in your capacity as Minister for the Cabinet Office, with responsibility for public-sector procurement policy and oversight of Crown Commercial Service frameworks.
We have undertaken extensive analysis of public-sector legal procurement and court-adjacent influence within the UK, focusing on how certain firms are embedded upstream of judicial scrutiny through regulatory design, public inquiries, and repeat instruction via national frameworks.
Against this structural backdrop, TLT has attracted sustained public criticism and controversy, including links drawn in public commentary to wider risk and governance failures, unusually poor public reputation metrics for a firm of its size (including a Trustpilot rating of 1.5/5), and repeated red flags identified during our review of hundreds of UK law firms. There are already entire websites dedicated to scrutiny of certain TLT partners.
That TLT is at the heart of an unraveling scandal which has already seemingly led to the departure of the Chief Risk Officer of NatWest Group and exposes the Chief Financial Officer of NatWest Group to scrutiny. See here for more details. Also see broader case study.
The more significant issue, however, is systemic. TLT’s access to government work is enabled primarily through CCS legal frameworks, which allow central government departments, regulators, police forces and other public bodies to instruct firms without open tender. As you are aware, these frameworks operate on multi-year cycles, with high barriers to entry and due-diligence processes that prioritise technical capability, financial stability and compliance, while offering limited visibility on public-interest risk once a firm is appointed. In practice, renewal risk appears low unless formal performance failures are recorded, allowing influence to persist for extended periods with limited external scrutiny.
Given the proximity of this work to courts, regulators and law-enforcement bodies, we believe this raises legitimate questions for government about concentration of influence, adequacy of oversight, and whether current framework governance sufficiently reflects public-interest risk.
We are therefore asking that you review this matter, including the operation, renewal and oversight of CCS legal frameworks and the barriers to entry and accountability mechanisms they create. We hold a substantial body of material—over 1,000 pages of evidence and analysis—linked to TLT, which we are ready to share with you or your officials.
Our position is straightforward: scrutiny should focus on how these relationships are sustained, how contracts are renewed, and whether current due-diligence and oversight arrangements remain fit for purpose.
That TLT could use its government influence to potentially drive forward its troubling practices and grow it’s firm, seems deeply troubling to us,
We would welcome confirmation of the appropriate channel through which the material can be formally submitted.