A company associated with Baroness Mone has failed to meet a deadline to repay £122 million to the Government for delivering faulty PPE. Health Secretary Wes Streeting pledged to aggressively pursue PPE Medpro after it did not comply with a High Court order to make the payment by 4pm on the specified day. The Department of Health and Social Care successfully sued the consortium, led by Baroness Mone’s husband Doug Barrowman, for providing 25 million substandard surgical gowns in 2020, breaching sterility standards.
Mrs. Justice Cockerill instructed PPE Medpro to reimburse the public funds with interest, totaling over £145 million. Interest will accrue at a rate of 8% annually until the amount is repaid to the Government. PPE Medpro filed for insolvency the day before the ruling, disclosing assets of only £666,000 in its recent financial records.
Streeting criticized PPE Medpro for selling inadequate equipment during a national crisis, failing to meet the payment deadline, and accumulating a debt of over £145 million with daily accruing interest. The Government is determined to recover the funds for the NHS.
The Mirror initially exposed the connection between Baroness Mone and PPE Medpro, which secured significant contracts for PPE supply during the pandemic. The Scottish businesswoman recommended the company through the VIP lane amid the Covid outbreak, although she denied any involvement initially. However, it later emerged that she and her husband profited £65 million from the company.
In 2023, the couple admitted to misleading the media about their ties to PPE Medpro. A spokesperson for the consortium stated readiness to negotiate a settlement with the Government through administrators, emphasizing the Government’s lack of response to their offer.
Barristers representing PPE Medpro argued during the trial that the company faced unfair treatment and attributed the gown defects to post-delivery storage conditions. Lady Mone and Mr. Barrowman criticized the Government’s handling of the situation, with Mone claiming they were unfairly targeted and Barrowman denouncing the ruling as unjust.
PPE Medpro maintains that it fulfilled its gown delivery commitments, contests the sterility claims, and asserts that the verdict was based on a technicality. Baroness Mone has faced intense scrutiny following the High Court ruling, with a petition signed by over 285,000 individuals demanding the revocation of her peerage and expulsion from the House of Lords.
Appointed as a Tory peer by David Cameron, Mone went on leave from the Lords in 2022, losing her parliamentary privileges. Removing her peerage would necessitate an act of Parliament, though she has the option to voluntarily resign from the Lords.
