"The case, he said, was not going to focus on the role of Michelle Mone, the Conservative peer who helped secure multimillion pound personal protective equipment (PPE) contracts for her husband's company during the Covid pandemic. Rather, it was about the PPE itself, delivered on the second contract, in which the government paid PPE Medpro 122m to supply sterile surgical gowns."
"During the pandemic, Mone and Barrowman's false public denials of their involvement, the secret profits banked, and Mone's Instagram pictures of herself on a sun-kissed yacht named Lady M in the summer of 2021, made her the poster woman for the Tory government's VIP lane contracts, which enriched a few while the nation suffered. Some of the evidence in the trial further illuminated Mone's role, in pressing civil servants for the gowns contract to be awarded to the company."
High-stakes legal proceedings began in June where the Department of Health and Social Care seeks repayment of £122m from PPE Medpro for a 25 million-gown contract. Health officials inspected the second delivery in September 2020 and rejected the sterile surgical gowns as non-compliant with PPE safety laws; the gowns were never used in the NHS. The company was ultimately owned by Doug Barrowman, husband of Conservative peer Michelle Mone. Evidence showed Mone pressed civil servants to award the contract and used public denials while profits were banked. The court limited its remit to the quality and payment issue, not ethical or political implications.
Read at www.theguardian.com
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