Michelle Mone-linked company fails to pay £122m for unusable Covid PPE

15 October 2025 , 21:28

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A firm connected to the former Conservative peer Michelle Mone has not paid any of the £122m that a high court ordered it to return for supplying unusable personal protective equipment during the Covid pandemic.

Mrs Justice Cockerill ordered that PPE Medpro must, by 4pm on 15 October, repay the money it received from the Department of Health and Social Care for 25m sterile surgical gowns under a contract awarded in June 2020.

Shortly before 5pm, the health secretary, Wes Streeting, said PPE Medpro had missed the deadline and that the government would seek payment. The DHSC said interest on the £122m, accruing since the PPE gowns were rejected as unusable in late 2020, had reached £23.7m – bringing the total owed to almost £146m.

“At a moment of national emergency, PPE Medpro supplied the previous government with inferior kit and took taxpayers’ hard-earned money,” said Streeting. “PPE Medpro has missed the deadline to pay – they still owe us over £145m, with interest now mounting daily.

“We will use every tool at our disposal to pursue PPE Medpro and get this money back where it belongs – in our NHS.”

Interest will now accrue at an annual rate of 8%, the DHSC said.

Uncertainty remains over how the government will recover the funds, as the company, owned by Mone’s husband, the Isle of Man-based businessman Doug Barrowman, has little money left and was placed into administration on 30 September, the day before the judgment was issued.

A spokesperson for Barrowman and Mone said the “consortium partners of PPE Medpro”, referring to three intermediary companies involved in supplying the gowns, were “prepared to enter into a dialogue with the administrators of the company to discuss a possible settlement with the government”.

Labour appeared not to have taken up this suggestion of settlement talks and was waiting for full payment to be made by the deadline.

The DHSC awarded the £122m gowns contract to PPE Medpro, and another worth £80.85m for face masks – a total of £203m – after Mone first approached the then Cabinet Office minister Michael Gove in May 2020. The contracts were processed via the “VIP lane”, operated by Boris Johnson’s Conservative government during the pandemic, which prioritised people with political connections. Mone was appointed to the House of Lords by David Cameron in 2015.

For years, she and Barrowman denied through their lawyers that they were involved with PPE Medpro. In November 2022, the Guardian reported that Barrowman had been paid at least £65m from PPE Medpro’s profits, then transferred £29m to a trust set up to benefit Mone and her three adult children.

In December 2023, Mone admitted in a BBC interview that the couple had lied and confirmed their involvement in the company. Barrowman acknowledged that he had been paid more than £60m and had transferred money into the trust; the couple said his children were also beneficiaries.