A company associated with Baroness Mone has failed to meet a deadline to repay £122 million to the Government for providing faulty PPE. Health Secretary Wes Streeting has pledged to aggressively pursue PPE Medpro after it did not comply with a High Court order to make the payment by 4 pm today.
The Department of Health and Social Care successfully sued the group, led by Baroness Mone’s spouse Doug Barrowman, for delivering 25 million substandard surgical gowns in 2020. The gowns did not meet sterility requirements.
Following a court ruling by Mrs. Justice Cockerill, PPE Medpro was instructed to refund the public funds, now totaling over £145 million with added interest at an 8% annual rate until repayment. PPE Medpro filed for insolvency the day before the ruling, revealing assets of only £666,000 in its recent financial statements.
Streeting criticized PPE Medpro for selling inadequate equipment during a national emergency, highlighting the outstanding debt of over £145 million with accruing interest. The government is determined to recover these funds for the NHS.
The Mirror initially exposed the connections between Baroness Mone and PPE Medpro, a company that secured significant PPE contracts during the pandemic. Mone recommended the firm through a controversial VIP channel in 2020 amid the COVID crisis.
Although initially denying involvement with the company to the Mirror, it later emerged that she and her husband profited £65 million from the business. In 2023, the couple admitted to misleading the media about their ties to PPE Medpro.
A spokesperson for PPE Medpro’s consortium stated willingness to engage in settlement discussions with the government through administrators but expressed disappointment at the lack of response from the authorities.
During a summer trial, PPE Medpro’s legal team argued that the company faced unfair treatment and blamed gown defects on post-delivery storage conditions. Lady Mone and Mr. Barrowman criticized the government’s handling of the case and rejected settlement offers.
PPE Medpro maintains that it delivered the promised gowns and disputes claims of non-sterility, attributing the court ruling to a technicality. Baroness Mone has faced public pressure following the High Court verdict, with a petition signed by over 285,000 people demanding her removal from the House of Lords.
Appointed as a Tory peer by David Cameron, Mone took a leave of absence from the Lords in 2022, relinquishing her party affiliation. While removing her peerage requires parliamentary action, she has the option to resign from the House of Lords.