PPE fraud inquiry has begun but will we hear a Mone?
The government’s PPE fraud inquiry has begun but will we hear a Mone?
I refer, of course, to Michelle Mone, the Ultimo bra millionaire and former Conservative life peer who (allegedly) received £29 million for recommending that a company that didn’t even exist at the time – PPE Medpro – should supply more than £200 million of duff personal protective equipment (PPE) to the National Health Service during the Covid-19 pandemic.
This was (allegedly) arranged via the illegal “VIP fast lane” for contracts that was used by friends of the then-Tory government.
The order included 25 million surgical gowns, for which the government paid £122 million. These were rejected by the Department of Health after a technical inspection and were never used.
PPE Medpro, in which her current husband was a major investor, passed £65 million on to a trust in which he was the beneficiary, and he passed £29 million of it on to a trust in which Mone and her adult children were the main beneficiaries.
When questions started to be asked about the products, the money and the method by which they were exchanged, Mone and her husband scarpered onto her then-brand-new yacht, the Lady M, from which she published Instagram posts of herself in swimsuits, living her best life.
It’s all right for some, isn’t it?
The money the Tory government spent on the useless equipment she recommended could have been used to buy acceptable PPE and make NHS staff less likely to catch Covid-19 and die – but apparently this did not occur to Baroness Mone.
Now the inquiry has begun, it would be welcome if she were compelled to attend and explain what happened – with documentary evidence, of course.
But does anybody honestly (ha ha!) think she will?
Details of the inquiry are here.
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Two things
Is she still a UK citizen and subject to UK Laws?
In every contract for Sale of Goods there are implied terms that the goods are of “merchantable quality”, that the goods are fit for purpose and as described. These terms can be explicitly excluded in a business sale (but not a consumer scale) but it’s not normal practice. Government contracts typically refer to standards, such as British Standards or ones set by the dept. purchasing the goods. Who in Government took these terms out of these contracts?
Yes, she’s definitely a UK citizen and subject to UK laws. She’s only on leave from the House of Lords; she hasn’t renounced her peerage!
As for taking those terms out of the contracts: we don’t know that anybody has!