Explainer
How the Michelle Mone scandal unfolded: £200m of
PPE contracts, denials and a government lawsuit
Conservative peer made multiple denials of any
association between her and PPE Medro
Caroline
Davies and David Conn
Sun 17 Dec
2023 17.40 CET
The
Conservative peer Michelle Mone and her husband, Doug Barrowman, denied for
years that they were involved in PPE Medpro, a company that secured more than
£200m in government contracts to supply face masks and surgical gowns during
the Covid pandemic. They are subject to a long-running National Crime Agency
investigation, facing allegations of fraud and bribery, which they deny.
Here’s a
timeline of key events.
May and
June 2020
The
government awarded PPE Medpro, a newly formed company, two contracts to supply
PPE. The first, for £80.85m, was to supply 210m face masks; the second, for
£122m, was to supply 25m sterile surgical gowns.
October
2020
As part of
the transparency rules over public spending, the government published the PPE
Medpro contracts. There were evident links with Mone, and Barrowman’s Isle of
Man financial services firm Knox group.
December
2020
The
Guardian revealed that PPE Medpro’s contracts were processed via the
government’s “VIP lane”, which fast-tracked offers of PPE from companies
introduced by people with connections to the government.
Mone and
Barrowman emphatically denied that they were involved when approached by the
Guardian. A lawyer for the couple said “any suggestion of an association”
between Mone and PPE Medpro would be “inaccurate”, “misleading” and
“defamatory”.
PPE Medpro
said: “PPE Medpro was not awarded the contract because of company or personal
connections to the UK government or the Conservative party.”
November
2021
In response
to a freedom of information request by the Good Law Project, the government
made public which companies were awarded contracts via the VIP lane. The list
revealed that Mone did introduce PPE Medpro to her fellow Tory peer and then
minister, Lord Agnew.
A lawyer
for Mone nevertheless denied that she had lied previously, and said: “Having
taken the very simple, solitary and brief step of referring PPE Medpro as a
potential supplier to the office of Lord Agnew, our client did not do anything
further in respect of PPE Medpro.”
Asked why
Mone did not declare PPE Medpro on her Lords register of interests, her lawyer
replied: “Baroness Mone did not declare any interest as she did not benefit
financially and was not connected to PPE Medpro in any capacity.”
January
2022
The
Guardian revealed, based on leaked files, that Mone and Barrowman both appeared
to be involved in the company.
In
response, a lawyer representing her said the Guardian’s reporting was “grounded
entirely on supposition and speculation and not based on accuracy”. A lawyer
representing Barrowman said the Guardian’s reporting amounted to “clutching at
straws” and was “largely incorrect”.
The House
of Lords commissioner for standards launched an investigation into whether Mone
had breached the Lords code of conduct.
March 2022
The
Guardian reported, following a freedom of information request, that Mone
introduced PPE Medpro in May 2020 initially to Michael Gove, then the Cabinet
Office minister. She had then emailed Gove and Agnew on their private email
addresses, offering to supply PPE through “my team in Hong Kong”.
March 2022
Guardian
revealed that the government had rejected the surgical gowns for which it paid
PPE Medpro £122m, and the gowns had never been used in the NHS.
PPE Medpro
maintained the gowns had been fit for purpose.
April 2022
The
National Crime Agency executed search warrants at Mone and Barrowman’s homes in
London and the Isle of Man, and PPE Medpro’s offices. The crime agency has said
its investigation began in May 2021, and was looking into “suspected criminal
offences committed in the procurement of PPE contracts by PPE Medpro”.
November
2022
The
Guardian revealed that leaked documents produced by HSBC bank indicated that
Barrowman was paid at least £65m from PPE Medpro’s profits. The documents
indicated that Barrowman then transferred £29m to an offshore trust, the
Keristal Trust, of which Mone and her three adult children were the
beneficiaries.
A lawyer
for Mone said in response to the Guardian’s reporting: “There are a number of
reasons why our client cannot comment on these issues and she is under no duty
to do so.”
A lawyer
representing Barrowman and PPE Medpro said a continuing investigation limited
what his clients were able to say. He added: “For the time being we are also
instructed to say that there is much inaccuracy in the portrayal of the alleged
‘facts’ and a number of them are completely wrong.”
December
2022
Mone
announced she was taking a leave of absence from the House of Lords with
immediate effect “in order to clear her name of the allegations that have been
unjustly levelled against her”, her spokesperson said.
The
government sued PPE Medpro for the full £122m it paid for the rejected gowns,
plus costs. PPE Medpro said it would “rigorously” defend the claim.
November
2023
After three
years of denials, Mone and Barrowman first acknowledged in response to
questions from the Guardian that they were involved with the company.
December
2023
Mone and
Barrowman took part in their first broadcast interviews to talk about the
scandal. In a film uploaded to YouTube, paid for by PPE Medpro, the presenter
Mark Williams-Thomas said that the couple were facing allegations of fraud and
bribery in the NCA investigation. In that interviewthe couple denied
wrongdoing.
In an
interview with the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg on Sunday, Mone admitted that she
lied to the press when she repeatedly denied involvement in the company via her
lawyers. She said she had done so to protect her family from press attention,
and now regretted it, but said that lying to the media was “not a crime”.
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