MICHELLE Mone has attacked the UK Government after her case was raised with the Prime Minister on the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg show.
Rishi Sunak was challenged about fraud and the “mess” of Covid contracts awarded by the Tory government at the height of the pandemic.
Kuenssberg said: “Michelle Mone, the former Conservative peer, admitted that she had lied about her involvement with a PPE deal, but she also believes very strongly that she and her husband have been made scapegoats.
“Now there's a criminal investigation, and I wouldn't expect you to comment on that, but many, many PPE contracts seem to have gone wrong. There was £9 billion of waste.
“How are you trying to get money back from other companies that were involved in waste of billions of pounds during the pandemic, and will anybody else be held accountable?”
Responding, Sunak said: “The first thing to say is that anybody who took advantage of an incredibly difficult time for our country to either defraud the public or do things that were illegal should be pursued with the full force of the law.
“We were all going through an awful time as a country, and the job was to get PPE to those on the frontline who needed it. Everyone will remember how stressful that was, and if people were trying to take advantage of that system and defraud the taxpayer, that's completely and utterly wrong.
“It's appalling and we should pursue them with the full force of the law.”
Asked if he thought “other people did” take advantage of the Tories’ unlawful “VIP lane” for Covid contracts, Sunak went on: “There are processes in place that the government has, as a public sector fraud authority and others that do those investigations and that diligence. Where we believe that that's happened, the government will, of course, take action.
“As you've said, in this particular instance, the government has taken legal action against the company in question [PPE Medpro], which is why I can't comment.
“More generally, you wouldn't expect me to comment on individual cases, but I can tell you that I, of course, take the matter incredibly seriously. It's wrong if that happened and, where there is evidence of it, of course, the government will pursue people with the full force of the law because that's the right thing to do. People should not be able to get away with things like that.”
Sharing a clip of the exchange on social media, Mone claimed the UK Government was using her case to distract “from their own failures”.
175 other PPE contracts were disputed by UK Gov but only Medpro has been litigated against so far. We are being scapegoated by the establishment who are deflecting from their own failures. Why did @RishiSunak & DHSC build up 5 years supply of PPE instead of 4 months as planned? pic.twitter.com/ZFUQeaqwCm
— Lady Michelle Mone (@MichelleMone) January 7, 2024
She wrote: “175 other PPE contracts were disputed by UK Gov but only Medpro has been litigated against so far.
“We are being scapegoated by the establishment who are deflecting from their own failures.
“Why did @RishiSunak & [the Department of Health and Social Care] build up five years supply of PPE instead of four months as planned?”
The comments echo a statement on the ongoing scandal from Mone’s husband, Doug Barrowman, which was published on New Year’s Day.
Barrowman said it “suits the agenda” of the UK Government to “scapegoat” him and his wife for their part in supplying items through his PPE Medpro firm.
Mone has admitted she lied when she denied having connections to the company, a consortium led by her husband, which was awarded contracts worth more than £200 million to supply gowns and face masks.
The lingerie entrepreneur stands to benefit from its £60m in profits that have been placed into a trust by her husband.
Barrowman said he and his family have been “treated as a punchbag by the media for the past three years” and have “received death threats and a constant torrent of online and other abuse” as a result of the row.
“Michelle and I are being hung out to dry to distract attention from Government incompetence in how it handled PPE procurement at time of national emergency,” Barrowman said.
“Medpro supplied the Govt with 1.5% of PPE spend (£202 million) against a total of £13.1 billion and yet the media or Government refuses to focus on the other 98.5% of PPE supplied; much of which was defective or never used and/or supplied in identical circumstances to the Medpro contracts.”
He branded it “simply unacceptable” that the UK Covid-19 Inquiry is not scheduled to review pandemic PPE procurement until 2025 – after a General Election expected to take place this year.
