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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
National
David Conn

Revealed: the billion-pound PPE contractor with a Tory MP on site

Graphic of a Uniserve truck, Lord Agnew, some stray cash and people in PPE
A judgment in the high court against PPE Medpro also shone light on government contracts handed to the logistics company Uniserve. Composite: Guardian Design/AFP/Getty Images/Alamy

When Mrs Justice Cockerill handed down her judgment in the high court against PPE Medpro, the company linked to the Conservative peer Michelle Mone, for supplying unsafe personal protective equipment during the Covid crisis, her findings were a landmark in a five-year saga that cast the opaque world of government deal-making into stark light.

PPE Medpro was ordered to refund the full £122m that the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) paid for unusable gowns in the summer of 2020, as Boris Johnson’s government scrambled to refill the UK’s depleted stocks.

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