Baroness Mone said she stands to benefit from PPE contract
Baroness Michelle Mone has said she stands to benefit from a contract between the Government and PPE firm Medpro in her first major broadcast interview since the scandal emerged.
The Conservative peer and Ultimo bra tycoon faced questions over the controversy surrounding “VIP lane” contracts during the coronavirus pandemic when she appeared on the BBC’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg programme on Sunday.
It comes after she conceded she made an “error” in publicly denying her links to the firm, which is being investigated by the National Crime Agency (NCA).
PPE Medpro was awarded Government contracts worth more than £200 million to supply personal protective equipment after she recommended it to ministers.
She admitted she is a beneficiary of her husband Doug Barrowman’s financial trusts, which hold around £60m of profit from the deal but said the couple have been made “scapegoats” for the government’s wider failings over PPE.
Untruthful
Baroness Mone has repeatedly denied that she had profited from the deal, which she first discussed with government ministers including Michael Gove.
It was during her chat with the BBC that she conceded to making repeated untruthful statements in relation to the matter.
Baroness Mone told the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg: “If one day, if God forbid, my husband passes away before me, then I am a beneficiary, as well as his children and my children, so yes, of course.”
Baroness Mone said she did not mean to fool anyone, despite admitting the couple misled the press about their involvement.
“I did make an error in saying to the press that I wasn’t involved,” she said
“Hindsight is a wonderful thing. I wasn’t trying to pull the wool over anyone’s eyes, and I regret and I’m sorry for not saying straight out, yes, I am involved.”
Breach of contract
The Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) has since issued breach of contract proceedings over the 2020 deal on the supply of gowns.
Millions of gowns supplied by the company were never used by health services.
The couple insist the gowns were supplied in accordance with the contract.
Lady Mone, who was interviewed alongside her husband, recently told a YouTube documentary that they both would be cleared, arguing they have “done nothing wrong”.
The film, part of a public fightback, is believed to have been funded by PPE Medpro.
Lady Mone, who was made a peer by Lord David Cameron in 2015, has argued she is being used as a scapegoat by the Government for its own Covid failings.
It comes as two experts who appeared in the film told The Sunday Times that they were unaware in advance of the intended focus of the documentary or its funding.
Former detective-turned-investigative journalist Mark Williams-Thomas, who presented and produced, the documentary, said: “For the Sunday Times to suggest contributors were duped is totally refuted , un- evidenced and totally incorrect & unfair reporting.
“Both individuals have said they would have said exactly the same had they known the programme was eventually funded by PPE Medpro.”
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So many issues with this. Remember Laura Kuennsberg is basically on message for what No10 tells the BBC to do. Gave Boris a free ride and protected him when an MP said BJ lied (“That’s quite a charge” she said, not up on facts pr protection?) Next, they went to Monaco, that means there were conditions and I expect they saw the edit and approved it? There are many ways to do interviews including live into a show, TV links are a fact of life now. The look of this, they are in Monaco, I mean who else doesn’t jet… Read more »
‘Hindsight is a wonderful thing’ but this is not applicable. Foresight is even better when knowing well in advance that you are going to be engaging in wrongdoing. ‘Scapegoats’ is a meaningless term set against victims which is what we the taxpayers are but despite all of this, SHE will not be properly punished and WE will remain the victims. All of the money should be returned to the exchequer but not a single penny will be.
Mone and hundreds of others like her see nothing wrong in being part of a corporate class that pops into the criminal class from time to time especially when there are tasty morsels to be harvested. This should be a test case, an exemplar, where the full weight of law should be bought to bear with no mitigation. It forms part of an episode in recent British history where a bunch of well connected business people and politicians thought they could do much as they liked regardless of rules, regulations, laws or even basic morality.
This just shows how corrupt the UK system is, when she can take leave of the House of Lords, to avoid scrutiny and accountability. The common citizen would be in court on fraud and deception charges by now, while she roams free while posing on a yacht in a swimsuit.
So is she going to be stripped of her peerage?