This is about the corrupt awarding of contracts to firms that did not supply adequate materials (in this case, Personal Protective Equipment to help with the Covid-19 crisis).

Phil Moorhouse of A Different Bias lays out the situation as it stood at midday on December 7:

Keir Starmer interrogated Rishi Sunak about this in Prime Minister’s Questions – and Sunak was pilloried for his response. Note that he confirmed that Mone “no longer has the Conservative whip”:

The sideswipe from Sunak, that Labour should “stand up for working people” – by opposing industrial action by working people who are struggling to survive in an atmosphere of real-terms pay cuts while inflation spirals out-of-control – is perverse.

It’s shameful that the UK has been reduced to having a prime minister who can’t respond naturally to questions but has to read his answers from a piece of paper.

Who’s telling him what to say about this scandal?

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Leave of absence: Lady Mone. Apparently she doesn’t turn up to the House of Lords very often and rarely votes. One is led to wonder what she considers her peerage to be for.

Tory Baroness Michelle Mone, currently at the centre of a scandal over a £29 million payout by a firm said to have provided duff PPE to the government during the Covid-19 crisis, has taken a leave of absence from the House of Lords.

Watch this article on YouTube:

Mone says she has been unjustly accused of taking £29 million from a Personal Protective Equipment manufacturer in thanks for her recommending its products in the “VIP lane” for firms fast-tracked by politicians or officials.

Not only has the “VIP lane” since been branded illegal, but it has been claimed that much of the gear from PPE Medpro didn’t meet the standard.

She says she is leaving to clear her name. Her choice coincides with efforts by the Labour Party to force the publication of texts and emails relating to £200m of Covid PPE contracts secured by PPE MedPro, a company linked to the Tory peer.

And it follows accusations from former Health Secretary Matt Hancock, who said had sent him an “aggressive and threatening” email in June 2021, demanding his “urgent help” to secure a government contract for a firm that he did not name.

In his book Pandemic Diaries, which is currently being serialised by a newspaper, he wrote: ”

Baroness Michelle Mone has sent me an extraordinarily aggressive email complaining that a company she’s helping isn’t getting the multi-million-pound contracts it deserves.

She claims the firm, which makes lateral flow test kits, ‘has had a dreadful time’ trying to cut through red tape and demanded my ‘urgent help’ before it all comes out in the media.

‘I am going to blow this all wide open,’ she threatened.

I won’t be pushed around by aggressive peers representing commercial clients.

That’s pretty damning stuff!

Hancock has claimed that Mone was actively and aggressively trying to secure contracts for “commercial clients” – which implies a business relationship, so he believed Mone was being (or would be) paid by this firm for her efforts to win contracts for it.

That is precisely what the accusation against her entails and I hope he provides any evidence he has to any investigation.

And Mone has taken a leave of absence at this time. I wonder if she’ll ever come back.

Source: Michelle Mone takes leave of absence from House of Lords | The Independent

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Accused: Lady Mone.

How low can our politicians go?

Just at the moment, there’s a very low bar to limbo under – but it seems former Ultimo underwear boss turned Tory peer Michelle Mone may have managed it.

The allegation in The Guardian is that, while the rest of us laboured under lockdown, desperate to keep ourselves and our relatives alive, Lady Mone was making £65 million from a Personal Protective Equipment manufacturer in thanks for her recommending its products in the “VIP lane” for firms fast-tracked by politicians or officials.

Not only has the “VIP lane” since been branded illegal, but it has been claimed that much of the gear from PPE Medpro didn’t meet the standard.

It was suggested that…

Michelle Mone, a Tory peer, her husband, Douglas Barrowman, and her children secretly received £65m originating from the profits of PPE Medpro, a company that was awarded large government contracts during the pandemic after she recommended it to ministers.

The government lubricated such questionable deal-making by setting up a “VIP lane” into which suppliers recommended by politicians or officials were fast-tracked.

PPE Medpro’s business was referred to the VIP lane after Lady Mone contacted the ministers Michael Gove and Lord Agnew to offer help in May 2020. A few weeks later, the government contracted to pay the firm £203m for protective equipment for the NHS.

A court later said that the VIP lane was unlawful. Perhaps worse, it was ineffective. The government is now in dispute over millions of surgical gowns supplied by PPE Medpro that it says were not up to scratch. PPE Medpro insists its products passed inspections.

Lady Mone… denies becoming fantastically rich by profiting from a company she lobbied to be awarded state contracts.

But she is also

being investigated by the Lords commissioner for standards after being accused of failing to declare an interest in PPE Medpro.

The Guardian, outraged, claims that peerages should not be a means to personal or ideological ends.

But isn’t that the best that can be said of almost any UK politician these days?

They all seem to be on the take and for many, it seems, that is the only point of being in Westminster at all.

It isn’t many years since it was possible to discuss genuine political theory when examining politicians’ behaviour – but now all we see is avarice.

Too many have been caught lobbying for the firms that gave them their second or third job, or using their position to rig the rules in their own fields of business, or seen to have set themselves up for high-paid jobs after leaving Parliament. Haven’t they?

Sadly, we don’t have a way of looking into candidates’ minds before they get elected into their Commons seats, to detect the corruption before it can do its worst.

So, what is the solution to the rot that’s making Parliament reek?

Source: The Guardian view on crony capitalism: a moral corruption stalks parliament

Have YOU donated to my crowdfunding appeal, raising funds to fight false libel claims by TV celebrities who should know better? These court cases cost a lot of money so every penny will help ensure that wealth doesn’t beat justice.

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