Michael Gove “had no involvement” in the awarding of a contract by exams regulator Ofqual to a PR firm founded by former close colleagues, the cabinet office has said.

The regulator, which has found itself at the centre of a fiasco surrounding the awarding of this year’s A-level and GCSE grades, reportedly gave a contract to Public First to help with its communications strategy this summer.

The founders of Public First are James Frayne and Rachel Wolf, who both formerly worked with Mr Gove when he was the Tories’ shadow education spokesperson and then education secretary between 2007 and 2014.

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A cabinet office spokesperson said it is “categorically untrue” that Mr Gove or the department had any involvement in the awarding of the contract.

He added: “The cabinet office had no involvement in the contract and did not discuss it with Ofqual. It is false to claim otherwise.”

Ms Wolf co-authored the Conservative Party’s election manifesto in 2019 and founded the New Schools Network, a charity which helped develop the government’s flagship free schools programme.

She also worked as an adviser to prime minister Boris Johnson when he was London mayor and a shadow education minister.

Details of the contract, which the Guardian reported was made under “exceptional circumstances” by Ofqual, have not yet been made public.

An Ofqual spokesperson said: “Public First was initially hired by Ofqual in June to provide short piece of work on insight on public opinion for this year’s exam arrangements.

“Public First is currently assisting Ofqual’s small communications team with an unprecedented amount of media interest in a complex policy area.”

In a statement to the Guardian, Ofqual said: “Due to the exceptional circumstances presented by the cancellation of exams, the single tender justification process was used for this contract due to the need to urgently procure the work, in line with our procurement policy. We will publish details when we publish our next set of contract data.”

Labour’s shadow cabinet office minister Rachel Reeves said “long-standing friendships” should not lead to an “unfair advantage” in the awarding of public contracts.

She added: “The government’s focus should have been on actually sorting out the problem of A-level gradings rather than spending thousands of pounds of taxpayers’ money trying to tell students and parents that everything is OK.

“Having good comms is one thing, but the government is lacking competence, attention to detail and a sense of fairness.

“It would of course be totally wrong if long-standing friendships between individuals in business and the government provided an unfair advantage when any public contracts are awarded.”

It was reported on Wednesday that Public First was given a £116,000 contract by the Department of Health and Social Care to look at what lessons have been learnt from Covid-19.

It was reported last month that Public First was awarded an £840,000 contract by the cabinet office, where Mr Gove is a minister, to research public opinion about the government’s handling of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Public First and Ofqual have been approached for comment.