A company linked to Baroness Michelle Mone and her husband Doug Barrowman has been ordered to pay £122million in damages after a High Court judge ruled it breached a government PPE contract during the Covid pandemic.
PPE Medpro supplied millions of surgical gowns to the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC), but the court found the firm had not shown the products went through a validated sterilisation process.
The dispute began in 2020, when PPE Medpro – set up by a consortium led by Barrowman – won contracts through the government’s “VIP lane” after being recommended by Baroness Mone.
The DHSC later rejected 25 million gowns, claiming subsequent tests showed “a number of them were not sterile” and unsuitable for NHS use.
The company, which went into administration the day before the judgment, has been ordered to pay by 15 October.
Chancellor Rachel Reeves said the government was working with administrators and “all different authorities” to recover the money.
She added: “I will do everything in my power to get that money back. That money belongs in our schools, in our hospitals and in our communities.”
Responding to the decision, Baroness Mone said: “It is nothing less than an Establishment win for the Government in a case that was too big for them to lose.”
A spokesperson for Barrowman said the ruling was “a travesty of justice”, claiming Medpro had “convincingly demonstrated that its gowns were sterile”.
Baroness Mone has been on leave of absence from the House of Lords since 2022.
Reeves told the BBC: “I hope she won’t be back in the House of Lords,” but confirmed it was beyond her powers to strip her of her peerage.
Meanwhile, the National Crime Agency said its separate investigation into Medpro, launched in 2021, was still ongoing.