The award of large PPE contracts to a company linked to the Conservative peer Michelle Mone was part of a “panic-buying” Covid procurement process that exposed “serious defects in the government’s stewardship of public money”, MPs have said.
In a report limited by an ongoing National Crime Agency investigation into the company, PPE Medpro, the public accounts committee (PAC) emphasised general criticisms of the “VIP lane” process that gave high priority to PPE offers from companies with political connections.
PPE Medpro was awarded two contracts, for face masks and sterile surgical gowns, costing a total £203m, after Mone first approached Michael Gove, then Cabinet Office minister, in April 2020, with an offer to supply PPE.
The PAC said internal documents that the Department of Health and Social Care provided gave only a “snapshot” of the procurement process, and it could not say whether PPE Medpro had been treated differently to other companies in the “VIP route”.
It said the contracts were awarded through the government’s generally flawed processes, after normal procurement rules were suspended because of the Covid emergency. The DHSC accepted “very high levels of risk” in its urgency to buy PPE, the report said, and even if some offers or companies were “suboptimal”, it bought the PPE anyway, with limited safeguards, the PAC said.
“Colloquially, this might be called panic-buying.”
The PAC report on DHSC documents followed the Guardian’s revelation in November 2022 that Mone and her children secretly received £29m originating from PPE Medpro’s profits, according to leaked documents produced by HSBC bank.
Mone’s husband, the Isle of Man-based financial services businessman Douglas Barrowman, was paid at least £65m from the PPE Medpro profits, according to the documents, and paid the £29m into an offshore trust for the benefit of Mone and her three adult children.
Mone, 51, and Barrowman, 57, have over the past two years repeatedly insisted they had no “involvement” in PPE Medpro, and “no role” in the process through which the company was awarded its government contracts. The Guardian has previously reported how those claims seem to be at odds with documents appearing to show the couple were secretly involved in PPE Medpro’s business, and emails suggesting Mone repeatedly lobbied the government on its behalf.
In response to the Guardian’s reporting on the tens of millions they both appeared to have made from the profits, a lawyer for Mone said: “There are a number of reasons why our client cannot comment on these issues and she is under no duty to do so.”
A lawyer who represents Barrowman and PPE Medpro said a continuing investigation limited what his clients were able to say in relation to the Guardian’s report. He added: “For the time being we are also instructed to say that there is much inaccuracy in the portrayal of the alleged ‘facts’ and a number of them are completely wrong.”
PPE Medpro is the subject of an ongoing investigation by the National Crime Agency, which has said it opened in May 2021 “into suspected criminal offences committed in the procurement of PPE contracts by PPE Medpro”.
Lawyers for PPE Medpro have declined to comment on the NCA investigation.
