This article originally appeared in our Elevenses newsletter.
Michelle Mone graduated from the Prince Andrew School of Crisis Management this weekend after her bid to use an interview with Laura Kuenssberg to try and rehabilitate her public image backfired spectacularly. The Tory peer, who is currently on a leave of absence from the House of Lords and continues to refuse to accept any wrongdoing in profiteering from the sale of useless PPE to the NHS during a time of crisis, experienced first-hand that you can’t always make your problems go away by batting your eyelashes at them, provoking public furore that would make most serial killers blush as her flimsy defence fell flat on its face.
And quite rightly so. The charges against Mone and her husband, Doug Barrowman – who has managed to become a footnote in the scandal even though he has admitted to running PPE Medpro consortium – are about as serious as they get. In cahoots with Anthony Page – another largely omitted name – they leveraged their political connections to use a VIP fast-track lane to get their hands on £200 million in government contracts, £29 million of which has since been deposited in an Isle of Man trust of which Mone and her adult children are beneficiaries. To add insult to injury, the items were deemed unusable by the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC), leaving taxpayers to foot £3.2 million a year in storage costs required to house kit that never saw the light of day.
But in the case of Mone and Co, the government knows all that, and to give them credit where it is due, they are actually doing something about it. The DHSC is suing PPE Medpro to the tune of more than £130 million for “breach of contract and unjust enrichment” and the firm is also being investigated by the National Crime Agency (NCA) over criminal bribery. If either case bears fruit it will allow Number 10 to say they addressed the one crony contract everyone is talking about and nip the crisis in the bud.
Which brings me to the crux of my point. By allowing Mone to become a figurehead in this scandal, we risk focussing on a small slice of what is a very corrupt cake. While most people now recognise the Tory peer and hold a degree of resentment towards her as a result, it must please figures like David Meller, Andrew Feldman and Lord Agnew no end that their names barely get a mention, not to mention those within government like Michael Gove, who sent out the “call to arms” for all Lords, baronesses, MPs and senior civil servants to help supply equipment and gave their bids (which would typically come in at 80 per cent above non-VIP lane suppliers) elevated importance over all others.
Mone is wrong in almost every aspect of her defence, but she is right about one thing: This is a crisis of the government’s own making, and they absolutely knew what was going on. Their scapegoat peer is just the tip of the iceberg in a scandal “of epic proportions”, as Angela Rayner noted in December 2022. We mustn’t limit its scope by focusing our ire on one isolated individual.
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