The Department of Health and Social Care has won its High Court case against a personal protective equipment supplier that was recommended to ministers by Conservative peer Michelle Mone during the height of the Covid pandemic.
PPE Medpro was contracted to provide 25 million sterilised surgical gowns for the NHS at a cost of £121,999,219.20 under a deal agreed in mid-2020. The gowns were produced in China and shipped to the UK in batches that arrived between late August and late October that year.
However, DHSC formally rejected the gowns in December 2020 on the grounds that they did not meet contracted sterility requirements, based on sample testing.
Evidence submitted to the High Court suggested that 103 out of 140 gowns tested failed to meet the required standard of sterility. The court heard that in order to meet the specified “sterility assurance level”, no more than 25 gowns out of the total shipment would have been permitted to fail.
Despite succeeding in securing an award of the full contract value for the gowns as damages, DHSC failed in its bid to get a further £8m in storage costs for the gowns. The High Court said the department’s legal team had been unable to substantiate the loss, based on its evidence at trial.
Mrs Justice Sara Cockerill said DHSC had based its claim on storage costs in general – because it could not be specific about the exact cost of storage for the Medpro items as the department did not record billings in that way.
The judge said the court was being asked to take DHSC’s figures “on trust” and that was “simply not an adequate way of advancing a claim for over £8m”.
PPE Medpro was incorporated in May 2020 and was proposed by Baroness Mone as a PPE supplier via the government’s “VIP lane”, which allowed MPs and peers to recommend providers in that year’s scramble to build up reserves of equipment.
In addition to the contract for surgical gowns, PPE Medpro was also awarded a contract for face masks.
Mone and her businessman husband Douglas Barrowman both repeatedly denied having links to PPE Medpro, although they subsequently changed their story. The High Court judgment states Barrowman “appears to have been the economic principal of the business”.
In December 2022, Mone announced that she would take a leave of absence from the House of Lords, although she is still listed as a Conservative peer.
Responding to the High Court ruling, senior Conservative MP Claire Coutinho called on Mone – who currently has the Conservative whip suspended – to resign from the House of Lords. And the chancellor, Rachel Reeves, said: "I hope she won't be back in the House of Lords."
A life peerage cannot be relinquished. However, they can resign from being a member of the House of Lords.
In a statement issued yesterday, a spokesperson for Barrowman described the High Court judgement as “a travesty for justice”.
It said Judge Cockerill had given DHSC “an establishment win” in the face of a “mountain of evidence”.
“Her judgment bears little resemblance to what actually took place during the month-long trial, where PPE Medrpro convincingly demonstrated that its gowns were sterile,” the statement said.
“This judgment is a whitewash of the facts and shows that justice was being seen to be done, where the outcome was always certain for the DHSC and the government.”
Health secretary Wes Streeting said PPE Medpro had put NHS staff and patients in danger a time of national crisis.
“We won't stand for it and we're coming after every penny owed to our NHS,” he said. “This government will ruthlessly pursue any company which tried to exploit the pandemic for their own ends while our health service was fighting to save lives.”
Despite yesterday’s High Court victory, it is unclear how much of the £122m value of the contract for surgical gowns – plus interest – will be recoverable for DHSC.
PPE Medpro’s most recent accounts, which cover the period from 1 April 2024 to 31 July 2025, stated that the business had net assets of £666,025 and had spent approximately £4.2m defending the High Court case.
A notice to appoint an administrator to the company has reportedly been filed.