\n<\/p>\n
O<\/span>pening the high-stakes trial in a workaday, office-like courtroom in June, the government\u2019s barrister Paul Stanley KC sought to manage expectations for the media crowd in the folding seats at the back.<\/p>\n The case, he said, was not going to focus on the role of Michelle Mone, the Conservative peer who helped secure multimillion pound personal protective equipment (PPE) contracts for her husband\u2019s company during the Covid pandemic.<\/p>\n Rather, it was about the PPE itself, delivered on the second contract, in which the government paid PPE Medpro \u00a3122m to supply sterile surgical gowns. Health officials, it emerged in the trial, had rejected the gowns on sight in September 2020 as not compliant with laws governing PPE safety, and they were never used in the NHS. This trial was the DHSC\u2019s claim for the company, ultimately owned by Lady Mone\u2019s husband, the Isle of Man-based businessman Doug Barrowman, to repay the money.<\/p>\n <\/span>Michelle Mone and her husband, the Isle of Man-based businessman Doug Barrowman, at Cheltenham festival in 2019.<\/span> Photograph: David Hartley\/Shutterstock<\/p>\n During the pandemic, Mone and Barrowman\u2019s false public denials of their involvement, the secret profits banked, and Mone\u2019s Instagram pictures of herself on a sun-kissed yacht named Lady M in the summer of 2021, made her the poster woman for the Tory government\u2019s \u201cVIP lane\u201d contracts, which enriched a few while the nation suffered.<\/p>\n Some of the evidence in the trial <\/strong>further illuminated Mone\u2019s role, in pressing civil servants for the gowns contract to be awarded to the company. But Stanley, representing the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC), said the court was not going to consider \u201cany of the ethical or political implications\u201d of Mone\u2019s involvement.<\/p>\n \u201cThis case is simply about whether 25 million surgical gowns provided by PPE Medpro were faulty,\u201d Stanley told the judge, Mrs Justice Cockerill.<\/p>\n The press area never lacked spare seats after that first morning, as the opposing teams of lawyers pored over technical, regulatory and legal details through the summer\u2019s heatwave. But the core issues were still of huge public interest: about how the safety of equipment required to protect lives in hospitals was assured and how Boris Johnson\u2019s government procured PPE when the pandemic struck.<\/p>\n Court documents did set out some of Mone\u2019s role in that process, including that she had made the first approach; as the Guardian revealed in March 2022, she contacted former ministers Michael Gove and Lord Agnew, who referred her offer to the VIP lane.<\/p>\n The \u201chigh priority lane\u201d, termed the VIP lane by civil servants, was set up as the government was deluged with offers to fill the UK\u2019s depleted PPE stockpile. Approaches from politically connected people were treated as more credible, and more demanding of a response, than others, even from experienced PPE suppliers.<\/p>\n Evidence from a Cabinet Office civil servant, Richard James, showed that most communication with PPE Medpro came from its then director, Anthony Page, who also worked for Barrowman\u2019s financial services firm in the Isle of Man, but that \u201cMone remained active throughout\u201d.<\/p>\n Correspondence showed how insistently Page pushed for the contract, sometimes chasing more than once on the same day, and the pressure Mone applied. As Stanley promised, the lawyers did not pick over it, but her involvement and the VIP access she was afforded shaped the context in which her husband\u2019s company was given \u00a3122m of government money to supply vital PPE.<\/p>\n As officials considered details provided, James described Page to another civil servant as \u201cdesperate\u201d to close the deal. At one point, officials told Page that a proposed Chinese factory was not technically approved, and Page reported this \u201cextremely disappointing situation\u201d to Mone. Mone then had \u201cvarious communications\u201d with Chris Hall, a senior official in the Cabinet Office, Stanley\u2019s submission said, \u201cin which she pressed Medpro\u2019s case\u201d.<\/p>\n The DHSC\u2019s technical team approved the offer on 22 June 2020, and officials put \u201cVIP\u201d in the email subject line, which read: \u201cUrgent VIP TA [technical assurance] Review \u2026 PPE Medpro Limited Gowns \u2013 ACCEPT.\u201d<\/p>\n The contract was signed four days later, the DHSC buying 25m sterile surgical gowns for \u00a34.88 each \u2013 \u00a3122m. The Guardian reported in March 2022 that the gowns appeared to cost \u00a346m to buy from the factory \u2013 an apparent profit of \u00a376m for PPE Medpro and three intermediary companies.<\/p>\n Stanley maintained throughout that the DHSC\u2019s case was straightforward: the gowns PPE Medpro provided did not meet safety and sterility standards. The safety of medical products is established by having the manufacturing process certified by an authorised quality assurance organisation, termed a \u201cnotified body\u201d, which have numbers to identify them. Sterile surgical gowns \u2013 the sterility necessary to prevent infection in operating theatres \u2013 must be labelled with a CE mark, denoting compliance with European standards, and a number after it, identifying the notified body which certified the manufacture. The only other way for sterile gowns to be approved in the UK would be if the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) agreed an alternative manufacturing process, known as a derogation.<\/p>\n The PPE Medpro gowns shipped from China bore a CE mark on their labelling but no number. This meant the manufacture, and the sterility, were not certified by a notified body. No derogation had been sought from the MHRA. Stanley\u2019s case was that the gowns \u201cdid not comply with the law\u201d governing safety, so PPE Medpro had not delivered sterile gowns as ordered and set out in the contract and must repay the \u00a3122m, plus millions more in storage and other costs.<\/p>\n Charles Samek KC, representing PPE Medpro, argued that the company had never promised to supply gowns certified with a CE mark and notified body number. Page had told civil servants in the pre-contract correspondence how the gowns would be made in China, Samek said, and the DHSC had agreed the contract on that basis.<\/p>\n \u201cThey were manufactured by a reputable and certified Chinese manufacturing concern,\u201d Samek argued in his opening submission, \u201cand they were sterilised by equally reputable and certified Chinese sterilising factories.\u201d If a derogation was needed, it was up to the DHSC to apply for it, Samek argued.<\/p>\n In December 2020, as Mone and Barrowman through their lawyers publicly denied involvement, PPE Medpro issued a rare press release, saying it was not awarded contracts \u201cbecause of company or personal connections to the UK government or the Conservative party\u201d. The statement said the company was \u201cproud\u201d that face masks provided for the first, \u00a380.85m contract, and the gowns, \u201cundoubtedly helped keep our NHS workers safe at a time of shortages due to the Covid pandemic\u201d.<\/p>\n That was not true; the gowns had been stopped from being distributed and were never used in the NHS. The case revealed more of that process after the gowns arrived at NHS warehousing facilities in Daventry. Zarah Naeem, an MHRA safety official, inspected them on 11 September 2020, and noted the CE mark with no notified body number. In subsequent correspondence, Page told the MHRA that PPE Medpro had never promised that the gowns would have \u201cNotify [sic] Body accreditations\u201d. Alan Taylor, an MHRA investigator, told Page that the CE mark should not have been on the label without a notified body having certified that all requirements for sterility had been met.<\/p>\n \u201cOn this basis I will advise that the stock at Daventry cannot be released to the NHS until this matter is resolved satisfactorily and the product has the correct notified body certification,\u201d Taylor wrote.<\/p>\n The DHSC issued a formal rejection notice on 23 December 2020, telling PPE Medpro that the gowns were \u201cnon-compliant with the PPE laws\u201d. Later it commissioned tests which found a high proportion of the gowns were not sterile. In the trial, Samek, on behalf of PPE Medpro, disputed the validity of those test results.<\/p>\n In November 2022, the Guardian revealed that Barrowman had been paid at least \u00a365m from PPE Medpro\u2019s profits, then transferred \u00a329m to a trust set up to benefit Mone and her children. The Conservative government, then led by Rishi Sunak, did not sue for return of the \u00a3122m until after the public and parliamentary outcry which followed the Guardian\u2019s reporting.<\/p>\n During the five-week trial, Mone never appeared, but Barrowman was in court most days, sitting behind his company\u2019s lawyers. Yet Samek called neither Barrowman nor anybody else involved with PPE Medpro to give evidence and be questioned. Stanley called eight witnesses for the DHSC, to testify about how the contract was procured, and the gowns rejected.<\/p>\n Stanley had in effect cautioned that the trial would concern unsensational detail, not the stuff of political scandal. But the evidence nevertheless illuminated the inside workings of the government\u2019s pandemic response, a glimpse into civil servants\u2019 experiences of dealing with pressure for contracts from people given VIP treatment due to Conservative connections.<\/p>\n Mone posted from the Lady M in August 2021: \u201cLiving my best life!\u201d In December 2022 she took a leave of absence from the Lords, which continues. She finally admitted in a BBC interview in December 2023 that she had lied to the media when she denied being involved in PPE Medpro, and Barrowman acknowledged the money he had made. The National Crime Agency began an investigation in May 2021 into whether Mone and Barrowman had committed any criminal offences in the procurement of the contracts, which the couple deny. The investigation, which Samek said hung over PPE Medpro \u201clike Damocles\u2019 sword,\u201d is ongoing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Opening the high-stakes trial in a workaday, office-like courtroom in June, the government\u2019s barrister Paul Stanley KC sought to manage expectations for the media crowd in the folding seats at the back. 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