A furious row has broken out between the disgraced Conservative peer Michelle Mone and the government over how much they knew about her links to a company that won lucrative deals during the pandemic.
Mone claimed the Cabinet Office, which Michael Gove led at the time, the government and the NHS “all knew about my involvement from the very beginning” before awarding her husband’s firm £203m in contracts.
Rishi Sunak said Downing Street was taking the case “incredibly seriously” after Mone’s admission she had lied by denying her links to PPE Medpro, a consortium led by her husband that made millions of pounds from a deal to supply PPE via the “VIP lane” after she referred it to ministers in May 2020.
Mone remains a Tory peer, according to the House of Lords, despite No 10 claiming that she had “de facto” lost the whip because she had taken a leave of absence when the scandal broke. It emerged on Monday that she was no longer a party member.
The Guardian understands that the House of Lords standards commissioner has received a further complaint about Mone’s admission that she had lied to the media. The watchdog has already launched an investigation into the affair.
The row comes after Mone said in a BBC interview on Sunday that she “wasn’t trying to pull the wool over anyone’s eyes” and had not told the truth about her involvement to protect her family from press attention.
Guardian investigations found Mone and her husband, Doug Barrowman, were involved with PPE Medpro, which was awarded contracts worth £203m in May and June 2020 after she approached ministers, including Gove, with an offer to supply PPE equipment.
Mone has also admitted to being one of the beneficiaries of an offshore trust that was set-up by Barrowman using £29m originating from PPE Medpro profits. The National Crime Agency is conducting an investigation into alleged criminal offences in the procurement of contracts by the company.
Keir Starmer, the Labour leader, said she should be expelled from the Lords as he urged the government to “come clean” about the scandal, piling pressure on ministers to answer questions about what they knew, including who started the conversations with Mone in the first place.
“This is a shocking disgrace from top to bottom and, as every day goes past, there are more questions that need to be answered,” he said. “There’s now suggestions there was early private contact with members of the cabinet that may have started this unhappy story in the first place. So the government needs come clean.”
Asked if Mone should be expelled from the Lords, he said: “I don’t think she should be in the Lords. I think the government should be held to account for this.”
Mone name-checked Gove in her interview, saying she contacted the then Cabinet Office minister at the start of the pandemic to offer help. Now the levelling up secretary, Gove faces the media on Tuesday after a high-profile speech on planning.
During a trip to Scotland, Sunak was asked about Mone’s admission. “The government takes these things incredibly seriously, which is why we’re pursuing legal action against the company concerned in these matters,” he said. “That’s how seriously I take it and the government takes it.
“But it is also subject to an ongoing criminal investigation, and because of that, there’s not much further that I can add.”
The government issued breach of contract proceedings against PPE Medpro last December over the 2020 deal on the supply of sterile gowns. The firm is defending the legal action.
After the prime minister’s remarks, Mone tweeted: “What is Rishi Sunak talking about? I was honest with the Cabinet Office, the government and the NHS in my dealings with them. They all knew about my involvement from the very beginning.”
She also accused Gove and the Ddepartment of Health and Social Care official Sir Chris Wormald of overseeing a “huge waste in PPE contracts”.
Lord Bethell, the health minister at the time who oversaw the award of Covid contracts, rejected Mone’s claim that she had been honest with the government from the very beginning, saying she had failed to record the link to PPE Medpro in her register of interests.
Tory ministers echoed the calls for the lingerie entrepreneur not to return to the upper chamber. The energy efficiency minister, Lord Callanan, told Sky News he hoped she would “see sense” and “would not be coming back” to the Lords.
Claire Coutinho, the energy secretary and a close ally of Sunak, told LBC radio: “At the moment she’s on leave, and I think considering everything that has come out she’ll want to consider that position very carefully.”
The shadow Cabinet Office minister, Nick Thomas-Symonds, has written to the deputy prime minister, Oliver Dowden, calling for an urgent investigation into the allocation of the contracts in light of Mone’s BBC interview.
Specifically, he has asked why Gove, or any other government minister, did not correct the misleading impression being given to the public about Mone’s links to PPE MedPro over the last two years.
He also raised her accusation that an official had said they could make “other matters go away” in relation to the NCA investigation, asking whether senior officials had been authorised to enter into negotiations with Mone’s husband, Barrowman, on a potential settlement.
“Millions of pounds of public money are at stake,” Thomas-Symonds wrote. “As a result, it is vital that an urgent investigation is launched into these matters, which go right to the heart of the probity and competence of this government.”
