All six addresses have links to either Lady Mone — who was reportedly present at the house — or her husband. One is a Belgravia home she uses as her London base, while another is a Soho office to which several of their companies are registered.
Nicknamed ‘Baroness Bra’ after making her fortune in the lingerie trade, she famously used her maiden speech in Parliament, having been ennobled by David Cameron, to remind her ermine-clad colleagues: ‘I grew up in a tenement flat in the east end of Glasgow with no bath or shower and only a cupboard for a bedroom.’
This unfortunate fall from grace revolves around Lady Mone’s purported links to a company named PPE Medpro, which at the height of the first Covid lockdown in June 2020 won two contracts worth more than £200 million to supply protective equipment to the UK Government, without any competitive tender. So far, so questionable. But what would elevate this commercial dispute into a major political scandal were revelations about the role Lady Mone played in setting up the ill-fated transaction.
‘Baroness Mone has no comment as she has no role or involvement in PPE Medpro,’ they claimed, adding during a six-week correspondence with the Guardian that she was ‘not connected in any way with PPE Medpro’ and that ‘any suggestion of an association’ would be ‘both inaccurate and misleading’. Asked how she squared this revelation with her previous statement, the peer again issued a statement via lawyers.
In response, she again instructed lawyers, this time to claim that the report was ‘grounded entirely on supposition and speculation and not based on accuracy’. ‘In order to commit to this 100,000pcs per day could you please get back to me asap as freight will also need to be secured. Hope to see you in the House of Lords when we get out of lockdown. Kindest Regards, Michelle.’
The email stated: ‘Baroness Mone is going to Michael Gove and Matt Hancock today as she is incandescent with rage on the way she believes Medpro have been treating [sic].’
Goves roll in all this needs to be examined far more. Also, she was pushing this business six days before it had been incorporated. A WhatsApp VIP government culture has cost us billions. Spive economics.