PPE Medpro & Michelle Mone: Another COVID Windfall Winds Down
When the UK government was desperate for PPE, contracts magically appeared for companies with political connections. PPE Medpro, a firm with ties to Conservative peer Michelle Mone, secured a £200mn deal to supply medical gowns. The inconvenient truth, as the FT itself briefly notes, is the government is now seeking at least £122mn back because the equipment turned out to be unusable. This wasn't
a flaw in entrepreneurship; it was a feature of the system: public funds siphoned to private pockets, with substandard results for the actual public. Instead of accountability for the 'VIP Lane' that fast-tracked such contracts during the pandemic, we get quiet corporate unwinding. It’s almost as if the architects of this system—those who signed off on deals with unqualified companies while
frontline workers struggled—are hoping we'll forget the cost, both financial and moral. The real story isn't just a company going bust; it's a blueprint for exploiting public crises for private gain, rubber-stamped by those in power. One might wonder how many more of these 'bad deals' will simply disappear without proper restitution.