Mone used as ‘big gun’ in PPE contract negotiations, High Court judge says

Tory peer Michelle Mone was used as a “big gun” in contract negotiations between PPE Medpro and the Government, a High Court judge has said.

Mrs Justice Cockerill ruled on Wednesday that the firm, a consortium led by Baroness Mone’s husband, businessman Doug Barrowman, must repay the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) more than £121 million for breaching a contract for 25 million surgical gowns during the Covid-19 pandemic.

The company was awarded Government contracts by the former Conservative administration to supply personal protective equipment (PPE) during the pandemic, after Baroness Mone recommended it to ministers.

Both she and Mr Barrowman have denied wrongdoing.

The company agreed to the contract in the summer of 2020, but was sued by the DHSC in 2022 over claims that it breached the terms of the deal by providing “faulty” PPE.

It opposed the DHSC’s legal claim, with its lawyers telling a trial earlier this year that it had been “singled out for unfair treatment” and accused the Government of “buyer’s remorse”.

In her 87-page ruling, Mrs Justice Cockerill said that the company was incorporated on May 12 2020, and Baroness Mone referred it to the “High Priority Lane”, which managed PPE referrals from MPs, ministers and senior officials, the same day.

She continued that Medpro presented itself as a “worthy entrant into the fast lane for approval as a supplier and aiming to land contracts worth hundreds of millions of pounds of public money”, and “trumpeted” Mr Barrowman’s “years of experience”.

Baroness Mone also “facilitated” a call between DHSC and PPE Medpro officials during negotiations, the judge said.

The peer was used as a “big gun” by the company and “took up the fight on behalf of Medpro” with the Cabinet Office as the contract was negotiated, “threatening further escalation”.

Mrs Justice Cockerill continued: “Some issues were raised internally at DHSC with the recent incorporation of Medpro and the potential for conflict of interest, given Baroness Mone’s husband’s involvement.

“However, Medpro’s willingness to contract on DHSC’s standard terms was noted as a plus point.”

In court documents from May this year, the DHSC said it paid PPE Medpro £121,999,219.20 for the gowns in the summer of 2020.

Paul Stanley KC, for the department, told the trial that Baroness Mone remained “active throughout” the negotiations, but said that the DHSC “does not allege anything improper happened” and was “not concerned with any profits made by anybody”.

Mr Stanley said 99.9999% of the gowns should have been sterile under the terms of the contract, equating to one in a million being unusable.

He continued that no validated sterilisation process was followed, and of 140 gowns later tested for sterility, 103 failed.

Charles Samek KC, for PPE Medpro, said that the “only plausible reason” for the gowns becoming contaminated was due to “the transport and storage conditions or events to which the gowns were subject”, after they had been delivered.

He also said that the testing of the gowns did not happen until several months after they were rejected by the DHSC.

In her ruling, Mrs Justice Cockerill said that for the gowns to have the required sterility, there had to be “the following of a process which has stages” and “validation of that process having been followed… in the form of the documentation of the process”.

She continued that PPE Medpro had shown “acceptance” of the “obligation” to produce gowns with a specific level of sterility, known as a sterility assurance level (SAL).

The judge said: “There may not have been an independent contractual obligation to demonstrate a validated process, but that requirement of a process was inherent in the SAL requirement which Medpro must and does accept.”

Although the judge found that the Government had failed to reject the gowns under the terms of the contract “within a reasonable time”, she ruled it was still entitled to recover the costs of the contract as it had “no realistic identifiable route to selling or deploying these gowns”.

She said: “The DHSC contracted for sterile gowns, but received gowns that were not, contractually speaking, sterile, or properly validated as being sterile.”

Mrs Justice Cockerill continued: “That means that they could not be used as sterile gowns in the NHS or elsewhere.”

She added: “DHSC’s failure to act was not one which led to the loss of an opportunity to reduce the financial damage.”

The judge dismissed the Government’s claim for the further £8,648,691 spent on transporting and storing the items, as it had “failed to prove this element of the claim”.