I commended the High Court judgement on PPE Medpro for breaching a government contract to supply 25 million surgical gowns during the Covid-19 pandemic.
PPE Medpro, the company linked to Baroness Michelle Mone through her husband, Doug Barrowman, was found to have provided equipment that was unusable and could “seriously harm or kill patients”. The company must now pay back £122million by 15th October 2025 to the Department of Health and Social Care, who previously rejected much smaller offers by Medpro to settle rather than the final repayment figure agreed today.
DHSC originally sued PPE Medpro back in December 2022 arguing that the gowns supplied had not been properly sterilised using the correct processes. According to their KC, Paul Stanley, of the 140 gowns tested, 103 failed, rendering them utterly useless to the NHS at the height of the pandemic.
It may have taken over 5 years, but this ruling is an important milestone in a sorry tale of business greed and opportunism at a time of great danger and risk to life for our citizens and staff in our health care service during the global pandemic.
As SNP Health and Social Care Spokesperson, I have previously raised the issue of recovery of the very wasteful PPE contracts that were awarded during the pandemic at Parliament, which the UK Government has estimated to have cost the taxpayer an eye watering and morally reprehensible £1.4billion.
Furthermore, I join with my SNP colleagues at Westminster in urging the UK Government to strip Baroness Mone of her peerage. Let’s see if they’ve got the gumption to do it.
