A firm linked to Baroness Mone has lost a £122 million PPE case brought against it by the Government.
PPE Medpro was set up by a consortium headed by Doug Barrowman, husband of Ultimo bra entrepreneur and Conservative life peer Mone, to provide medical supplies at the height of the COVID pandemic.
Mone recommended the company as a supplier and it won the contract through the Conservative government’s controversial ‘VIP lane’ system.
Following a High Court ruling, it must now repay the £122m it received from the Department of Health and Social Care to supply 25m sterile surgical gowns for hospitals in August and October 2020. The Government has argued successfully that these gowns, manufactured in China, were unusable, claiming it was “not satisfied that the gowns were contractually compliant… a number of them were not sterile”.
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The legal action was launched in 2022. Mone came under fire after initially denying that she had gained directly from the contracts then later admitting that she stood to benefit from tens of millions of pounds of profit.
She claimed in a BBC interview that she and Barrowman had lied about their involvement with PPE Medpro to avoid “press intrusion”.
The High Court ruled that PPE Medpro had failed to prove that the surgical gowns had undergone a validated sterilisation process. It added that it was not possible for the DHSC to sell them on to recoup the loss.
The High Court denied the Government’s claim for £8.6m costs incurred for transporting and storing the items as this cost was not proven.
Health minister Stephen Kinnock said the ruling was “great news” while Mone said it was “shocking” and Barrowman claimed it was “a travesty of justice”.