Michelle Mone-linked PPE firm liquidated and unlikely to repay £148m

The UK Government is unlikely to see most of the £148m it is owed by a faulty PPE supplier linked to Baroness Michelle Mone after the company was wound up.

PPE Medpro, a consortium run by Mone’s husband Douglas Barrowman, was placed into liquidation at the Insolvency and Companies Court on Thursday.

It follows a High Court ruling in October, which found that the firm breached a contract to supply 25 million surgical gowns during the Covid pandemic.

PPE Medpro filed for administration in September, a day before the order to pay. HM Revenue & Customs is separately owed £39m in tax.

Records filed by PPE Medpro’s administrators have revealed it only had around £600,000 available to pay unsecured creditors.

At the Insolvency and Companies Court, barristers for the three joint administrators asked for the firm to be kept in administration to pay off money owed.

But lawyers for the Department for Health and Social Care (DHSC) said PPE Medpro was “hopelessly insolvent” and asked for the firm to be wound up.

Despite the order to pay back the money, as an unsecured creditor it’s unlikely the DHSC will recover the millions of pounds owed.

In his ruling, Judge Sebastian Prentis placed the company into liquidation.

He said: “The department’s debt is very large indeed and it is a debt which has been incurred through the supply of defective equipment at a time of national crisis.”

Judge Prentis said that there would be “questions of how this debt may be recovered” from the firm, adding that there was “very little” money left.

Health Secretary Wes Streeting said the DHSC would not rest until it had got back the “hard-earned taxpayer money paid to rogue operators like PPE Medpro”.

He added: “During the pandemic, when the whole country was making huge sacrifices, separated from family and loved ones, PPE Medpro supplied defective PPE and unfairly profited.

“We will keep going after PPE Medpro with everything we’ve got to get these funds back where they belong – in our NHS.”

PPE Medpro was awarded lucrative contracts worth £122m to supply medical gowns to the NHS during the pandemic.

It gained access to the government’s VIP lane to fast-track approved suppliers.

However, the equipment has been in storage since 2020 after the company failed to prove it was correctly sterilised.

Mone described the October court ruling as “nothing less than an establishment win for the government in a case that was too big to lose”.

She was made a peer by Prime Minister David Cameron in 2015, but took a leave of absence and lost the Tory whip following the PPE revelations.

Chancellor Rachel Reeves and Kemi Badenoch have both urged the Baroness to depart the Lords altogether.

The UK government’s insolvency service confirmed that an officer had been appointed to manage PPE Medpro’s liquidation.

A spokesperson said: “As with all cases of this nature, they will investigate the cause of the company’s failure and conduct of directors.

“Interpath Advisory were appointed joint liquidators of the company. They will wind up the company’s affairs in accordance with their statutory duties.”