'Insolvent' Mone-linked PPE supplier goes into liquidation

The company linked to the former Conservative peer Michelle Mone, which owes the government almost £150m for supplying unusable personal protective equipment during the pandemic, has been put into liquidation.

- David Conn

The Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) applied for PPE Medpro to be wound up at a high court hearing yesterday, arguing that the company was "hopelessly insolvent".

Mone’s husband, the businessman Doug Barrowman, owned PPE Medpro, which was awarded two contracts to supply PPE worth £203m after Mone approached Michael Gove, the then Cabinet Office minister, in May 2020. The contracts were processed via the “VIP lane” operated by Boris Johnson’s Conservative government during the pandemic, which gave high priority to people with political connections.

In October the DHSC won a high court judgment that the 25m gowns PPE Medpro had supplied under the second contract, for which it had been paid £122m, had not been certified to be sterile as required. On 30 September, the day before the judgment was made public, the company was put into administration by a private trust company registered in the Isle of Man, linked to Barrowman.