A company linked to Michelle Mone has been ordered to repay close to £122million after it was determined it breached a contract for PPE.
PPE Medpro was awarded government contracts during the pandemic to supply personal protective equipment after it was recommended to the Conservative government by the Tory peer.
Medpro was awarded two contracts, one worth over £80m for masks and another worth £120m for gowns.
Though the masks were used, the gowns were found not to be up to standard and were never used by the NHS.
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Lady Mone's husband, Doug Barrowman, was the ultimate owner of the company which was later sued by Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) for providing 'faulty' gowns which were not sterile.
Baroness Mone and Mr Barrowman threatened defamation lawsuits when their involvement with the company first came to light, denying any connection between the peer and PPE Medpro.
Both now admit this was a lie.
By their own calculations the profit margin for Medpro was around 30% and Mr Barrowman earned upwards of £60m - despite the fact the gowns were never used and never could have been.
The money was put into a number of offshore trusts, including £28.8m transferred to one registered on the Isle of Man of which Mone and her children are beneficiaries.
A High Court judge on Wednesday ruled that PPE Medpro must repay close to £122m to the government for breach of contract.
However, an application to put the company into administration was lodged earlier this week, with PPE Medpro having just £666,000 in assets.
Reading a summary of her ruling on Wednesday, Mrs Justice Cockerill said the contract was a “complex document” but found that PPE Medpro “has breached the contract”.
She continued that the DHSC was “entitled to the price of the gowns as damages” as “the gowns could not be used as sterile gowns”, but ruled the Government was not entitled to the costs of storing the gowns.
The judge said that the money must be paid by 4pm on October 15.
In court documents from May this year, the DHSC said it paid PPE Medpro £121,999,219.20 in the summer of 2020 and rejected the gowns in December that year.
In a written statement Mr Barrowman, a businessman who led the consortium, said: “Today, a travesty of justice took place following the judgment of Lady Justice Cockerill.
“She gave the DHSC (Department of Health and Social Care) an Establishment win despite the mountain of evidence in court against such a judgment.
“Her judgment bears little resemblance to what actually took place during the month-long trial, where PPE Medpro convincingly demonstrated that its gowns were sterile.
“This judgment is a whitewash of the facts and shows that justice was being seen to be done, where the outcome was always certain for the DHSC and the Government. This case was simply too big for the Government to lose.”
In a post on X on Tuesday, Baroness Mone said she and Mr Barrowman had been “deliberately scapegoated and vilified” in a campaign to “distract from catastrophic mismanagement of PPE procurement”.
She claimed the case “was never about gowns or money” and said that before the trial, PPE Medpro offered to replace the gowns and then offered cash sums to settle the case, which were rejected.
She said: “Instead, the DHSC chose to spend a staggering £5 million of taxpayers’ money pursuing litigation against a company they knew had no funds.”
Chancellor Rachel Reeves, who has been leading work within government to claw back money lost during the Covid-19 pandemic, welcomed the judgment.
She said: “We want our money back. We are getting our money back.
“And it will go where it belongs – in our schools, NHS and communities.”
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