Baroness Michelle Mone has said she has “no wish to return” to the House of Lords as a Conservative peer after a company linked to her was ordered to repay millions of pounds for breaching a Covid-19 PPE contract.
On Wednesday, PPE Medpro was ordered to pay back nearly £122 million to the Government after it was found to have breached a contract to supply surgical gowns during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Several high-profile politicians have called for Lady Mone to relinquish her peerage following the High Court judgment, including Chancellor Rachel Reeves, with Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch telling BBC local radio on Thursday that Lady Mone had brought “embarrassment and shame to the party”, and should have the “book thrown at her”.
In a letter to Mrs Badenoch on Friday, Lady Mone said there “seems to be a bit of amnesia” about her loss of the Conservative whip, stating that she had “removed it myself by taking a leave of absence”.
She continued: “However, you will be pleased to hear that once I do clear my name, I have no wish to return to the Lords as a Conservative peer; that’s assuming there still is a Conservative Party before the next general election.”
In response, a Conservative spokesman said Lady Mone would never have the Tory whip returned, if she were to come back to the House of Lords.
He said she had fallen “well short” of the expected standards.
Lady Mone also said in the letter to Ms Badenoch that she was “shocked to the core to read about your inflammatory language” during the Tory leader’s appearance on BBC radio.
The businesswoman later said that the previous Conservative government “knew of my involvement from the outset and welcomed my assistance at a time of national emergency” and that she had not acted differently from other politicians who had referred companies.
She continued: “So Kemi, my role was exactly the same as all other Conservative MPs and peers who were trying to help provide PPE.
“Like me, they would all have acted as liaisons and conduits between the company and the government and would have worked hard to ensure that contracts got over the line and through the red tape that was still present in obtaining contract awards at a time of national emergency.
“So, on the above basis, if I have done wrong then so have all the others in the VIP lane. In which case, you should be calling out for them to resign as well. That’s if you manage to work out what it is they are supposed to have done wrong.”
Lady Mone later said she had “never received a penny from PPE Medpro”.
A Conservative Party spokesman said: “Baroness Mone has not been in receipt of the Conservative whip since she took a leave of absence from the House of Lords, and she is not a Conservative Party member.
“Baroness Mone was formally written to yesterday by the Lords Chief Whip, and informed that she would not receive the Conservative whip were she ever to return.
“Under Kemi Badenoch’s leadership, the Conservative Party expects parliamentarians to maintain the highest standards, and on this Baroness Mone has fallen well short.”
PPE Medpro, a consortium led by Lady Mone’s husband Doug Barrowman, was awarded Government contracts by the former Conservative administration to supply personal protective equipment (PPE) during the pandemic, after Lady Mone recommended it to ministers.
In her 87-page ruling on Wednesday, Mrs Justice Cockerill said the gowns “were not, contractually speaking, sterile, or properly validated as being sterile”, which meant they could not be used in the NHS.
Barristers for PPE Medpro told the trial it had been “singled out for unfair treatment” and accused the Government of “buyer’s remorse”, claiming the gowns became defective because of the conditions in which they were kept after being delivered.
Mrs Justice Cockerill found PPE Medpro had breached the contract.
She said the Department of Health and Social Care was entitled to the price of the gowns as damages, but not the costs of storing the items.
Lady Mone criticised the judgment, calling it a win for the “establishment”, while Mr Barrowman said it was a “travesty of justice”.
Friday’s letter comes after Lady Mone accused Ms Reeves of using “dangerous and inflammatory” language about her, after she was reported to have joked that the Government had a vendetta against the peer during a fringe event at Labour’s party conference this week.
In a letter to the Prime Minister, Lady Mone described the statement as “one of the most troubling interventions ever made by a senior minister of the Crown”.
