SCOTTISH actor Brian Cox has said that it is "obscene" to profit from the pandemic as he reacted to Michelle Mone's disastrous interview.
The actor appeared on the Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg panel alongside Susanna Reid and former cabinet minister Robert Buckland, as an exclusive interview with Mone and her husband aired at the top of the programme.
In the interview, Mone admitted she stands to benefit from a contract between the UK Government and PPE firm Medpro, and to lying to the press.
Mone conceded that she is a beneficiary of her husband Doug Barrowman’s financial trusts, which hold around £60 million of profit from the deal but said the couple have been made “scapegoats” for the government’s wider failings over PPE.
Mone has previously repeatedly denied that she had profited from the deal, which she first discussed with UK Government ministers including Michael Gove. It was during her chat with the BBC that she conceded to making repeated untruthful statements about the matter.
Before the interview, Cox was asked what he thought of Mone as "a public character" while the programme showed images of them at a debate during the 2014 independence referendum.
He said: “She’s an extraordinary woman, clearly quite a brilliant entrepreneur in certainly her bra business, which was a huge success, but we of course differ on the fate of our country, we have a huge difference about that.
“My feeling is that she said she lied – you don’t lie. When you’re dealing with something like this, you don’t lie, not even tell a little lie, because it just points you in the wrong direction – and it will, as she says, make her a scapegoat. She shouldn’t tell lies.”
Following the interview, Cox said it was an "instinctive thing" for people to take advantage of a crisis, and it is the job of the UK Government to "curb" that.
He said: "I just think that in times of a major crisis like we had with Covid, to take advantage of a situation like that, there’s something obscene about it as far as I’m concerned.
"You have to behave with utmost scrutiny and there wasn’t enough scrutiny in this case, I don’t think at all, which has led to her, and her husband, being in the situation they are.
“I find that the lack of the scrutiny in the government in dealing with this is what is questionable, and I think that should’ve been looked at.
“When there’s a major crisis, naturally people are looking to take advantage to make some money out of it, that’s sort of the instinctive thing, but its’ wrong and it should be curbed.”
It comes as First Minister Humza Yousaf called for the House of Lords to be abolished in the wake of Mone's interview.
