VIP lanes and 25m faulty gowns: what PPE Medpro trial reveals about Tory response to Covid | Michelle Mone
OThinking about the trial high in a working hearing room in June, the lawyer for the Paul Stanley KC government sought to manage expectations for the crowd of the media in folding seats on the back.
The case, he said, was not going to focus on the role of Michelle Mone, the conservative peer who helped obtain personal personal protection contracts (EPI) of several million pounds for her husband’s company during the cocovio pandemic.
Rather, it was the PPE itself, delivered to the second contract, in which the government paid the EPI Medpro 122 million pounds Sterling to provide sterile surgical dresses. Health officials emerged during the trial, had rejected vision dresses in September 2020 because not in accordance with the laws governing the security of PPE, and they were never used in the NHS. This trial was the DHSC’s complaint for the company, owned by the husband of Lady Mone, the businessman of the Man Island, Doug Barrowman, to reimburse the money.
During the pandemic, the false public denials of Mone and Barrowman on their involvement, the secret benefits bowed and the Instagram photos of Mone on a yacht decorated with sun named Lady M in the summer of 2021, made her the woman for the nation of the conservative government.
Some of the proofs of the trial The role of MONE has enlightened more and more in pressing officials for the dresses contract to be awarded to the company. But Stanley, representing the Ministry of Health and Social Coins (DHSC), said that the court was not going to examine “none of the ethical or political implications” of MONE’s participation.
“This case simply consists of knowing whether 25 million surgical dresses provided by EPI Medpro were defective,” Stanley told the judge, Ms. Justice Cockerill.
The press area never lacked spare seats after this first morning, while opposing lawyers of lawyers rushed into technical, regulatory and legal details through the summer wave of summer. But the main problems were still of a huge public interest: the way in which the safety of the equipment required to protect lives in hospitals was ensured and how the government of Boris Johnson bought the Epi when the pandemic struck.
The court documents expressed part of the role of MONE in this process, in particular that it had made the first approach; As the Guardian revealed in March 2022, she contacted the former ministers Michael Gove and Lord Agnew, who referred his offer to the VIP way.
The “high priority route”, called VIP Lane by civil servants, was created because the government was fell from tenders to fill out the UK exhausted EPP stock. The approaches of politically connected people have been treated as more credible and more demanding of an answer, than others, even by experienced PPE suppliers.
The evidence of an Officer of the Office Cabinet, Richard James, have shown that most of the communications with EPI MedPro came from its then director, Anthony Page, who also worked for the Barrowman financial services company on the island of Man, but that “Mone remained active throughout”.
Correspondence has shown how much the page has insisted on the contract, sometimes pursuing more than once the same day, and the pressure of the pressure has applied. As Stanley has promised, lawyers did not choose it, but its involvement and VIP access that has been offered to him shaped the context in which her husband’s business received 122 million pounds sterling of money to provide vital EPI.
While the managers considered the details provided, James described page to another civil servant as “desperate” to conclude the agreement. At one point, officials said on page that a proposed Chinese factory was not technically approved, and Page reported this “extremely disappointing situation” in Mone. Mone then had “various communications” with Chris Hall, a senior official of the office of the cabinet, the submission of Stanley said: “In which she pressed the case of Medpro”.
The DHSC technical team approved the offer on June 22, 2020, and the managers put “VIP” in the electronic mail object line, which said: “Urgent VIP Ta [technical assurance] Examine… Limited dresses PPE MedPro – Accept. »»
The contract was signed four days later, the DHSC buying 25 million sterile surgical dresses for £ 4.88 each – 122 million sterling pounds. The Guardian reported in March 2022 that the dresses seemed to cost 46 million pounds sterling to buy at the factory – an apparent profit of 76 million pounds sterling for the EPP Medpro and three intermediate companies.
Stanley maintained throughout the fact that the case of the DHSC was simple: the dresses that the EPP MedPro provided did not meet safety and sterility standards. The safety of medical products is established by the manufacturing process certified by an authorized quality insurance organization, called “notified body”, which has figures to identify them. Sterile surgical dresses – The sterility necessary to prevent infection in operational rooms – must be labeled with a CE brand, designating compliance with European standards, and a number after, identifying the notified body that has certified manufacturing. The only other way for sterile dresses to be approved in the United Kingdom would be if the Regulatory Agency for Medicines and Health Products (MHRA) accepted an alternative manufacturing process, called derogation.
PPE MedPro dresses shipped from China have supported a mark on their labeling but no number. This meant that manufacturing and sterility were not certified by a notified body. No derogation had been requested from the MHRA. The case of Stanley was that the dresses “did not comply with the law” governing security, so the EPI MedPro had not delivered sterile dresses as ordered and stated in the contract and had to reimburse the 122 million pounds sterling, more millions of storage costs and other costs.
Charles Samek KC, representative PPE MedPro, argued that the company had never promised to provide certified dresses with an CE brand and an informed body number. Page had explained to civil servants in pre-contract correspondence how dresses would be made in China, said Samek, and the DHSC had agreed on this basis.
“They were manufactured by a renowned and certified Chinese manufacture concern,” said Samek in her opening submission, “and they were sterilized by Chinese Chinese sterilization factories that are just as deemed and certified.” If a derogation was necessary, it belonged to the DHSC to apply it, argued Samek.
In December 2020, while Mone and Barrowman through their lawyers publicly denied participation, PPE Medpro published a rare press release, claiming that it had not been awarded contracts “due to personal or personal relations with the British government or the conservative party”. The press release indicates that the company was “proud” that the masks opposite provided for the first contract of 80.85 million pounds sterling, and the dresses, “undoubtedly contributed to ensuring the safety of our NHS workers at a moment of shortage because of the cocovio pandemic”.
It was not true; The dresses had been prevented from being distributed and were never used in the NHS. The case revealed more from this process after the arrival of dresses in the NHS storage facilities in Daventry. Zarah Naeem, an MHRA security official, inspected them on September 11, 2020 and noted the CE brand without a notified body number. In subsequent correspondence, Page told MHRA that the EPE MedPro had never promised that the dresses would have “informed [sic] Bodily acréditations ”. Alan Taylor, an MHRA investigator, said on page that the brand should not have been on the label without a notified body having certified that all the sterility requirements had been met.
“On this basis, I would advise that Daventry’s stock cannot be released at the NHS until this case is resolved satisfactorily and that the product has correct notified body certification,” wrote Taylor.
The DHSC published an official rejection notice on December 23, 2020, telling the Epi Medpro that the dresses were “not in accordance with EPI laws”. Later, he ordered tests which found that a high proportion of dresses were not sterile. In the test, Samek, on behalf of the EPI MedPro, challenged the validity of these test results.
In November 2022, the Guardian revealed that Barrowman had been paid at least 65 million pounds sterling in the profits of PPE MedPro, then transferred 29 million pounds Sterling to a trust created for the benefit of Mone and his children. The Conservative government, then led by Rishi Sunak, did not continue for the return of the 122 million pounds sterling until after the public and parliamentary outcry which followed the report of the Guardian.
During the five -week trial, Mone never appeared, but Barrowman was in court almost every day, sitting behind the lawyers of his business. However, the samek called neither Barrowman nor anyone else involved in the EPI Medpro to testify and be questioned. Stanley called eight witnesses for the DHSC, to testify about how the contract was bought and the dresses rejected.
Stanley had in fact warned that the trial concerned details without dissension, not what is a political scandal. But the evidence nevertheless illuminated the inner functioning of the government’s pandemic response, an overview of the experiences of civil servants to deal with the pressure of the contracts of people who received VIP treatment due to conservative links.
Mone posted by the Lady M in August 2021: “Live my best life!” In December 2022, she took a leave of the Lords, which continued. She finally admitted to an interview with the BBC in December 2023 that she had lied to the media when she denied being involved in EPI Medpro, and Barrowman recognized the money he had earned. The National Crime Agency launched an investigation in May 2021 to find out if Mone and Barrowman had committed criminal offenses in the purchase of contracts, which the couple denies. The investigation, which said that Samek suspended at PPE Medpro “like the sword of Damocles”, is underway.
