Opinion
The peer sees herself as a victim, but she tried to hide the truth
Monday, December 18, 2023, 6:48 p.m. GMT
Rarely has there been a less convincing apology than that made by Michelle Mone in her weekend interview with the BBC's Laura Kuenssberg. Lady Mone admitted last month that she and her husband Douglas Barrowman were involved in a company called PPE Medpro, which won contracts worth £200 million during the pandemic and banked around £65 million of that as profits. On Sunday she told the BBC that she was sorry for lying about it for years. But despite the apology, the couple gave the impression that they had done almost nothing wrong. They blame others, especially the media and government officials, or the events that have placed them at the center of the post-mortem of the pandemic procurement.
Lady Mone repeatedly referred to the “hell” that reporters put her family through, as she did in a tearful interview on YouTube. Perhaps she hopes Prince Harry's victory in his phone-hacking case might generate sympathy among a public annoyed by press intrusion. Not to mention that the circumstances are completely different. She also said she had been advised by the Cabinet Office not to declare her interest in PPE Medpro on the House of Lords register.
A National Crime Agency investigation into allegations of fraud and bribery relating to the PPE-Medpro contracts is ongoing (Lady Mone and Mr Barrowman deny wrongdoing). But leaving aside the question of whether a crime has been committed, Lady Mone's repeated lies should disqualify her from Parliament. It's been a year since she took a leave of absence from the Lords. The scandal over the illegal VIP area is not just limited to Lady Mone, who is right that she should not be made a scapegoat for the system's widespread failings. Ministers, including Michael Gove, with whom she dealt directly, also have questions to answer.
But Lady Mone's dishonesty should be incompatible with public office. Since 2020, three different law firms have sent letters to the Guardian denying that she was in any way connected to PPE Medpro. One threatened that any suggestion of unification would be “misleading” and “defamatory.” Given that record, and the fact that she now admits to being the beneficiary – along with her adult children – of £29 million in an offshore trust set up by Mr Barrowman to use the profits of PPE Medpro, it is astonishing that she tried to justify her actions on the grounds that she wanted to avoid a “ho-ha.” The fact is that a company she and her husband were involved in made a £65m profit selling gowns and masks to the NHS – and she has repeatedly lied to keep this secret.
So far the Public Sector Fraud Authority, set up to recover pandemic losses, has recovered £130 million. Labor has pledged, if elected, to go further to cover the £7.2 billion lost to fraud during the crisis (£8.7 billion spent on faulty or overpriced PPE , were written off). With the National Audit Office finding that VIP firms with high-level contacts were ten times more likely to win contracts and criticizing the Health Ministry for its colossal waste, there is no shortage of evidence of incompetence and cronyism at the heart of government. However, with a public inquiry into the pandemic underway (procurement hearings take place next year), it is deeply worrying that a colleague like Lady Mone was able to use lawyers in her efforts to suppress the truth about what happened.
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