A company linked to Baroness Michelle Mone is in a High Court battle with the government over claims it supplied substandard medical gowns during the pandemic in a £122 million deal.
PPE Medpro agreed to provide 25 million sterile surgical gowns in the early stages of the pandemic in 2020, during a national scramble to plug a PPE shortage.
The Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) is now suing the firm for breach of contract, saying it was left with “unusable” gowns which had not been properly sterilised.
Medpro denies breaking the terms of its deal with the government, and is resisting the return of the £122 million fee.
It says blame for the PPE supply crisis when the pandemic struck lays at the door of the government, and says the gowns, produced in China, were accepted as being suitable when they were delivered.
Baroness Mone and her husband Doug Barrowman have been at the centre of a scandal for the last few years, after they falsely denied having ties to PPE MedPro.
The company secure contracts for the supply of gowns and face masks through the Conservative government’s controversial “VIP lane”.
Baroness Mone denied involvement with the deals, and a lawyer acting on behalf of her and her husband suggested a report linking them would be “defamatory”.
But their story gradually unravelled as it emerged she had recommended the company to government as a possible PPE supplier, while her husband benefits financially from the firm.
Baroness Mone took a leave of absence from the House of Lords as the scandal unfolded, and criminal investigations have being launched into the MedPro deals.
On Wednesday, the High Court was told Baroness Mone will not be appearing as a witness in the legal dispute.
The DHSC says she provided the introduction which set up the surgical gowns deal, and it is alleged she was “active throughout”.
In written submissions, Paul Stanley KC said Baroness Mone promoted the company in government circles and said her husband had “years of experience in manufacturing, procurement and management of supply chains”.
Opening his case, Mr Stanley said MedPro “agreed to supply 25 million sterile surgical gowns to the DHSC for a price of £122 million, pursuant to a detailed written contract. They were delivered, and paid for.”
He argued that Medpro, to comply with the contract, had to “sterilised the gowns using a validated process”.
“DHSC had to be certain that the gowns were sterile so that it could deploy them in clinical environments and be confident that they would not harm patients”, he said.
“DHSC’s case is that Medpro’s breaches of the Contract left the gowns unusable in the NHS or any other setting.
“DHSC contracted for sterile gowns, but received gowns that are not sterile, or properly validated as being sterile, and not properly CE marked.”
The government is seeking a return of the £122 million fee, plus damages to reflect the cost of storing the allegedly defective gowns and efforts that had to go into sourcing alternative products.
Charles Samek KC, for MedPro, said the government relaxed some of the rules in the scramble for equipment for the NHS, and the company says DHSC officials or its agents inspected the 25 million gowns in China and “saw nothing wrong”.
He said MedPro received an email five years ago from the technical assurance team at the DHSC’s PPE Cell, saying: “Gowns have been approved by Technical!”.
“Whereas the pandemic itself was of course a global phenomenon, the PPE crisis in this country – when the pandemic hit – was one entirely of the UK Government’s own making”, said Mr Samek.
“As the National Audit Office has since concluded, at the start of the pandemic, the UK stockpile of PPE was both (i) entirely inadequate in volume terms; and (ii) not intended for a coronavirus pandemic.
“In respect of gowns, the situation was as grave as one could possibly imagine: there were no gowns in the UK stockpile of PPE at all.
“The need to procure PPE at speed to address this unprecedented and damning scenario was self-evident.”
He argued the government’s PPE Cell was charged with “ensuring that any PPE offered to be supplied met the relevant technical standards so that it was fit for purpose and safe for patients and healthcare workers”.
MedPro says the relaxed bureaucracy in the supply of emergency PPE did not compromise the safety of healthcare workers and patients, and it insists that sterilisation standards were achieved and accepted by the government.
Lawyers for DHSC said the government tested a sample of 60 gowns and found that 55 were not sterile.
In the trial, MedPro is set to argue that there was a delay in the delivery of the gowns, due to doubt within government that they were needed, and it is believed that time lag led to them becoming contaminated with microbes.
In a statement, PPE Medpro said it “categorically denies breaching its obligations to DHSC in the supply of sterile surgical gowns during the Covid pandemic and it will robustly defend these claims in court.”
The trial at the Rolls Building of the High Court continues.
