Firm linked to U.K. lingerie tycoon must repay US$163 million for breaching COVID contracts

Michelle Mone poses for a picture on June 28, 2014. (Philip Toscano/PA via AP, File)

LONDON — A British High Court judge ruled Wednesday that a company linked to a lingerie tycoon must repay the government more than 121 million pounds (US$163 million) for breaching a contract to supply 25 million surgical gowns during the coronavirus pandemic.

In an 87-page ruling, Justice Sara Cockerill found that PPE Medpro had “breached the contract” and that the Department of Health and Social Care was “entitled to the price of the gowns as damages,” though not to the cost of storing the gowns.

The judge said the gowns, which had been manufactured in China to supposedly European standards, “were not, contractually speaking, sterile, or properly validated as being sterile” and that as a result they “could not be used as sterile gowns.”

PPE Medpro, which was established as the pandemic erupted in the spring of 2020, was a consortium led by Doug Barrowman, the husband of Michelle Mone, who had made her fortune though her lingerie brand Ultimo.

The consortium was awarded the lucrative contracts by the former Conservative administration led by then-prime minister Boris Johnson to supply personal protective equipment (PPE) during the pandemic, after Mone had recommended it to ministers to help get the contract over the line.

The contract was awarded despite concerns being raised about the potential for a conflict of interest given Mone was a Conservative member in the House of Lords, the unelected revising chamber in Parliament.

Under the fast-track model employed by the government at the time, preferential treatment was given to companies recommended by politicians. The case against PPE Medpo come to symbolize the hundreds of millions of pounds wasted through hastily awarded contracts for protective equipment.

None of the gowns were used by the state-run National Health Service.

The new Labour government, which came into power in July 2024, sued PPE Medpro over allegations that it breached a deal for the gowns as the items were “faulty” by not being sterile.

Treasury chief Rachel Reeves, who has been leading work within government to claw back money lost during the pandemic, welcomed the judgment and said the recouped money will go to fund public services.

“We want our money back,” she said “We are getting our money back.”

How the money will be repaid has been complicated somewhat by the news that PPE Medpro has filed its intention to go into administration, a type of bankruptcy protection which would see the appointment of an insolvency practitioner to deal with debtors.

Both Mone and Barrowman, who have denied wrongdoing, were furious at the judgment.

Mone described it as “shocking but all too predictable” and “nothing less than an establishment win for the government in a case that was too big for them to lose.”

Her husband blasted it as a “travesty of justice” and “a whitewash of the facts.

Though Mone wasn’t on the face of it involved in the company at the time of its launch, she soon come under fire for denying connections to PPE Medpro.

By the end of 2023, she admitted to repeatedly lying about her links to a company and had voiced her regret at threatening to sue journalists who alleged she had ties to the firm.

Mone was appointed to the House of Lords in 2015 by then Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron. She has taken a leave of absence from Parliament to “clear her name” over the scandal.

The COVID-19 Bereaved Families for Justice U.K. campaigning group said Mone should have her title -- she is a baroness -- “revoked” in light of the judgment.

“Nobody who had any part to play in the PPE scandal, which cost lives, should have any role in public life,” the group said.

Her title can only be removed by Parliament though Mone could choose to resign from being a member of the House of Lords.

Pan Pylas, The Associated Press