Cabinet ministers, comprising Johnson, Rishi Sunak and Matt Hancock, that made decisions on the COVID-19 pandemic. He was chair of the COVID-19 operations subcommittee. In a COBR meeting he chaired on 24 November 2020, he agreed, with the leaders of the UK's devolved governments, to a set of rules governing social mixing for the whole of the country over the Christmas period. It allowed for up to three households to form a "bubble" from 23 to 27 December, but was cancelled for London and South East England, while being limited to a single day for the rest of England, after the discovery of a mutant COVID-19 strain. Under the terms of England's all-tier COVID-19 restrictions in December 2020, pubs were only legally allowed to serve alcoholic beverages with a substantial meal. Gove initially said that this did not include Scotch eggs, which he defined as a "starter" on multiple occasions (although he said it "would count as a substantial meal if there were table service"); however, he later backtracked and said: "I do recognise that it is a substantial meal." Gove was co-chair of the EU–UK Partnership Council with European Commission vice-president Maroš Šefčovič. On 8 December 2020, after 10 months of talks with Šefčovič, he helped reach an agreement that included post-Brexit arrangements for the Irish border. As a consequence the Government decided to abandon parts of the Internal Market Bill that could have seen the UK break international law. David Frost succeeded Gove as the UK chair of the Partnership Council on 1 March 2021. In May 2021, Gove attended the 2021 Champions League Final in Porto with his son, supporting Chelsea; following his visit he was alerted by the NHS Test and Trace system of his potential exposure to the disease, and that he would need to self-isolate. Rather than isolating for the normal ten-day period, Gove was able to take part in a pilot scheme designed to investigate the efficacy of testing, which required him to self-isolate for only one day and undergo testing every day for a week. In a case brought to the High Court of Justice by the Good Law Project in June 2021, Gove was found to have acted unlawfully when the Government awarded a COVID-19 contract without a tender to a polling company owned by long-term associates of his and Dominic Cummings, then Johnson's chief adviser. In July 2021, Gove worked