Michelle Mone has been condemned as “disgustingly cynical” after a firm linked to the peer was ordered to repay £122m to the government for supplying faulty personal protective equipment.
On Wednesday, the High Court ordered PPE Medpro – a consortium led by Mone’s husband, Doug Barrowman – to repay £122m to the government after breaching a PPE contract during the Covid pandemic.
PPE Medpro to repay the full £122m, with interest, to the government by October 15, for supplying unsterile gowns to the Department of Health.
Mrs Justice Cockerill ruled that PPE Medpro had breached their contract with the government, with the gowns not complying with a “validated sterilisation process.”
But following the ruling, Mone had the gall to accuse the government of scapegoating her and her husband, claiming they were being made the “poster couple for the PPE scandal.”
In a post on X, the peer wrote: “This case was never about gowns or money. It has always been about politics and blame-shifting, a way to cover up the government’s disastrous £10 billion PPE write-off.
“Doug and I have been deliberately scapegoated and vilified in an orchestrated campaign designed to distract from catastrophic mismanagement of PPE procurement.
“The government decided to make us the poster couple for the PPE scandal, a convenient distraction to take the blame off them.”
Since then, Dr Rachel Clarke has condemned Mone for her response, sharing a moving post on social media highlighting the impact sub-standard PPE had on doctors and nurses during the pandemic.
Sharing a picture of herself from the pandemic in the “flimsiest, most pitiful PPE,” Dr Clarke wrote:
Tory peer @MichelleMone – who today rightly (& wonderfully) lost her legal case – dares to claim she’s been ‘scapegoated’.
What, Michelle? For the £122 million you pocketed from taxpayers for delivering unusable PPE – at least £65 million of which went straight into your venal husband’s offshore accounts in the Isle of Man?
For being one of a small minority of corrupt grifters who saw a global pandemic as nothing more than a chance to get rich quick? For caring more about lining your own pockets than the deaths of NHS staff & patients?
For being disgustingly cynical & avaracious – unlike all those millions of ordinary, decent Britons across the country who stepped up with such courage & decency?
I was given masks whose ear loops fell off & aprons so flimsy they ripped apart when you tried to put them on, Michelle. Nurses and porters in our hospital died from the Covid they caught there, Michelle.
How dare you try to bleat victimisation now, Michelle? You are the polar opposite of the values that should govern public life.
Repay what you owe & get your dishonourable form as far away from the House of Lords as possible.
Perfectly put Dr Clarke.
The dodgy equipment supplied by PPE Medpro became one of the biggest PPE scandals from the Covid pandemic. Mone had recommended the company to the government through the ‘VIP lane’, and initially denied having any links to her husband’s firm.
But in 2023, she admitted to the BBC that this was a lie, and revealed her and her children stood to gain from the profits of around £60m, which had been placed into a trust by her husband.
Mone insisted she had done nothing wrong aside from denying her links to the company though.