The Conservative peer Michelle Mone and her husband, Doug Barrowman, denied for years that they were involved in PPE Medpro, a company that secured more than £200m in government contracts to supply face masks and surgical gowns during the Covid pandemic. They are subject to a long-running National Crime Agency investigation, facing allegations of fraud and bribery, which they deny.
Here’s a timeline of key events.
May and June 2020
The government awarded PPE Medpro, a newly formed company, two contracts to supply PPE. The first, for £80.85m, was to supply 210m face masks; the second, for £122m, was to supply 25m sterile surgical gowns.
October 2020
As part of the transparency rules over public spending, the government published the PPE Medpro contracts. There were evident links with Mone, and Barrowman’s Isle of Man financial services firm Knox group.
December 2020
The Guardian revealed that PPE Medpro’s contracts were processed via the government’s “VIP lane”, which fast-tracked offers of PPE from companies introduced by people with connections to the government.
Mone and Barrowman emphatically denied that they were involved when approached by the Guardian. A lawyer for the couple said “any suggestion of an association” between Mone and PPE Medpro would be “inaccurate”, “misleading” and “defamatory”.
PPE Medpro said: “PPE Medpro was not awarded the contract because of company or personal connections to the UK government or the Conservative party.”
November 2021
In response to a freedom of information request by the Good Law Project, the government made public which companies were awarded contracts via the VIP lane. The list revealed that Mone did introduce PPE Medpro to her fellow Tory peer and then minister, Lord Agnew.
A lawyer for Mone nevertheless denied that she had lied previously, and said: “Having taken the very simple, solitary and brief step of referring PPE Medpro as a potential supplier to the office of Lord Agnew, our client did not do anything further in respect of PPE Medpro.”
Asked why Mone did not declare PPE Medpro on her Lords register of interests, her lawyer replied: “Baroness Mone did not declare any interest as she did not benefit financially and was not connected to PPE Medpro in any capacity.”
January 2022
The Guardian revealed, based on leaked files, that Mone and Barrowman both appeared to be involved in the company.
In response, a lawyer representing her said the Guardian’s reporting was “grounded entirely on supposition and speculation and not based on accuracy”. A lawyer representing Barrowman said the Guardian’s reporting amounted to “clutching at straws” and was “largely incorrect”.
The House of Lords commissioner for standards launched an investigation into whether Mone had breached the Lords code of conduct.
March 2022
The Guardian reported, following a freedom of information request, that Mone introduced PPE Medpro in May 2020 initially to Michael Gove, then the Cabinet Office minister. She had then emailed Gove and Agnew on their private email addresses, offering to supply PPE through “my team in Hong Kong”.
March 2022
Guardian revealed that the government had rejected the surgical gowns for which it paid PPE Medpro £122m, and the gowns had never been used in the NHS.
PPE Medpro maintained the gowns had been fit for purpose.
April 2022
The National Crime Agency executed search warrants at Mone and Barrowman’s homes in London and the Isle of Man, and PPE Medpro’s offices. The crime agency has said its investigation began in May 2021, and was looking into “suspected criminal offences committed in the procurement of PPE contracts by PPE Medpro”.
November 2022
The Guardian revealed that leaked documents produced by HSBC bank indicated that Barrowman was paid at least £65m from PPE Medpro’s profits. The documents indicated that Barrowman then transferred £29m to an offshore trust, the Keristal Trust, of which Mone and her three adult children were the beneficiaries.
A lawyer for Mone said in response to the Guardian’s reporting: “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 representing Barrowman and PPE Medpro said a continuing investigation limited what his clients were able to say. 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.”
December 2022
Mone announced she was taking a leave of absence from the House of Lords with immediate effect “in order to clear her name of the allegations that have been unjustly levelled against her”, her spokesperson said.
The government sued PPE Medpro for the full £122m it paid for the rejected gowns, plus costs. PPE Medpro said it would “rigorously” defend the claim.
November 2023
After three years of denials, Mone and Barrowman first acknowledged in response to questions from the Guardian that they were involved with the company.
December 2023
Mone and Barrowman took part in their first broadcast interviews to talk about the scandal. In a film uploaded to YouTube, paid for by PPE Medpro, the presenter Mark Williams-Thomas said that the couple were facing allegations of fraud and bribery in the NCA investigation. In that interviewthe couple denied wrongdoing.
In an interview with the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg on Sunday, Mone admitted that she lied to the press when she repeatedly denied involvement in the company via her lawyers. She said she had done so to protect her family from press attention, and now regretted it, but said that lying to the media was “not a crime”.
