Cachella Smith
Reporting from the High Court

Just after 10:30 at the High Court in London, a judge ruled that a company linked to Baroness Michelle Mone breached a contract with the government to supply sterile surgical gowns during the pandemic.

Mrs Justice Cockerill said PPE Medpro must now pay back the total cost of the gowns - £122m - after finding that the firm hadn't sufficiently demonstrated that the gowns had undergone the correct sterilisation process.

The deadline for repayment is 15 October - and Health Secretary Wes Streeting says the government wants "every penny".

The judgment, however, also pointed to flaws in the Department of Health’s actions – PPE Medpro had argued during the trial that DHSC’s rejection of the gowns was not timely and Mrs Justice Cockerill agreed it didn't happen within a reasonable time frame.

She also ruled against the government being able to claim the £8m it sought for the storage costs of the gowns.

Mone's husband Doug Barrowman - who led the consortium that PPE Medpro was part of - criticised the judgment, saying documentation is now available that proves the gowns were properly sterilised.

Mone, meanwhile, described the ruling as "nothing less than an establishment win for the government in a case that was too big to lose".

Neither the peer nor her husband appeared in court today for the judgment, which was delivered to the High Court in around 20 minutes. We will be closing our live coverage shortly, but you can read further details in our news story.

As we've been reporting, Medpro was found to have breached a government contract on the supply of 25 million sterile surgical gowns - with the judge ruling the company had not sufficiently demonstrated the correct sterility process had been followed.

Paul Stanley KC, representing the government, told the trial that of 140 gowns that were tested, 103 failed.

If the gowns had met the standard, around one in a million would be expected to fail the test.

Let's now return to some of the details of the case, as revealed in today's 87-page judgment.

As a reminder, Michelle Mone initially denied being linked to PPE Medpro - before admitting those links in a BBC interview in 2023.

Today's judgement describes Baroness Mone as a "big gun" whom PPE Medpro called upon to help the company in negotiations with the Cabinet Office in June 2020.

The judgment lays out some back and forth about concerns over the gowns between the government and Anthony Page, director at Medpro – who handled negotiations between the company and the government.

Mrs Justice Cockerill says in the judgment: "At this point, Page engaged his ‘big gun’ and contacted Mone.

Mone “then took up the fight on behalf of Medpro direct with... the Cabinet Office threatening further escalation”.

Labour says recovering money is a prioritypublished at 13:40 BST 1 October

13:40 BST 1 October

Damian Grammaticas
Political correspondent

Clawing back cash that may have been misspent during the pandemic has been a priority for the Labour government.

Labour’s 2024 manifesto promised "every means possible to recoup public money lost".

In June, an interim report for the chancellor said failed PPE contracts had cost the taxpayer £1.4 billion - half of which may never be recovered as checks to determine whether gowns, masks and visors were substandard had not been done in time to claim anything back.

For the government this is about demonstrating it is responsible when it comes to handling taxpayers’ money.

It has the added benefit that it may be able to recover funds the government badly needs, all while pointing the finger of blame at mismanagement by the Tories.

Michelle Mone clearly believes the judgement in the case is not the right one, on X she said it "contradicts all the evidence presented in court".

Earlier this week she asked "why is PPE Medpro the only company being taken to court?”

She maintains the equipment it supplied was to standard and added "many other suppliers who ran off with deposits or provided defective goods face no action".

But the government has said it will continue to seek to recover money from others, and the National Crime Agency is separately conducting its own enquiries. Baroness Mone and her husband Doug Barrowman have denied any wrongdoing.

Image source, EPA

We've now got reaction from Health and Social Care Secretary, Wes Streeting. (As a reminder - the PPE contracts in question were agreed in 2020, under the previous Conservative government.)

"PPE Medpro put NHS staff and patients in danger with substandard kit whilst lining their own pockets with taxpayers' money at a time of national crisis," Streeting says.

"Today's court ruling makes clear we won't stand for it and we're coming after every penny owed to our NHS.

"This government will ruthlessly pursue any company which tried to exploit the pandemic for their own ends while our health service was fighting to save lives.

“PPE Medpro must now repay the government and the taxpayer £122 million. My department will work closely with PPE Medpro Limited’s administrators to recover everything we can."

Image source, PA Media

The Scottish National Party has urged the UK government to strip Mone of her peerage.

The entrepreneur - who is from Glasgow - was given her title, Baroness Mone of Mayfair, by David Cameron in 2015. He also appointed Mone as his government’s "entrepreneurship tsar".

She was subsequently stripped of the Conservative whip and is on leave from the House of Lords.

Her title can only be removed through an act of Parliament, with SNP deputy Westminster leader Pete Wishart urging Labour ministers to "take action".

He adds: "The Lords is expensive enough - Michelle Mone cannot continue to have access to unfettered expenses at great cost to the public.”

The Lib Dems have also been weighing in, calling on Tory leader Kemi Badenoch to apologise "for the sleaze and scandal" under the Conservative government she was part of.

"Badenoch previously claimed Boris Johnson's partygate scandal was overblown," says Lib Dem deputy leader Daisy Cooper, who then asks whether "is this yet another Conservative Party scandal she is in total denial about?"

Stephen Kinnock MP, minister in the DHSC, says the department will make sure it gets the money back from PPE Medpro, the company linked to Baroness Mone and Doug Barrowman.

The company was today ordered to repay £122m to the DHSC for breaching a contract to supply PPE during the pandemic.

He tells BBC Politics Live: "This is absolutely great news. We want our money back we are going to get our money back."

Kinnock adds that he doesn't have the details about exactly how to pursue the money, as the news is just breaking: "£122m needs to be paid back and that's what's going to happen. We have now got the full force of the law behind us."

Doug Barrowman has previously told the BBC that he led the consortium which set up PPE Medpro and received around £60m in profits from the firm.

Baroness Mone has admitted referring the company to the "VIP lane", and said that she and her children stand to benefit from a trust into which some of those profits were paid.

Cachella Smith
Live reporter, reporting from the High Court

Today's judgment reveals more details about the company, PPE Medpro - and the government's race to supply protective equipment to the NHS as the Covid pandemic took hold in 2020.

Medpro was incorporated in 12 May 2020, seven weeks into the first UK lockdown, and was referred to the "High Priority Lane" (HPL) by Baroness Mone on the same day.

The HPL pathway, also known as the "VIP lane", had been set up in early 2020 to treat offers to supply PPE with greater urgency if they came with a recommendation from ministers, MPs, members of the House of Lords, or other senior officials.

Mrs Justice Cockerill points out that some issues had been "raised internally" at the Department for Health and Social Care around the "potential conflict of interest" with Baroness Mone's husband, Doug Barrowman, being linked to the company.

"However Medpro’s willingness to contract on DHSC’s standard terms was noted as a plus point," the judgment reads.

A contract for masks was subsequently concluded in 2 June 2020 ahead of the contract for gowns, which this case is about.

Freya Scott-Turner
Live reporter, reporting from the High Court

The location of the 25 million gowns since they were ordered in 2020 has been a key part of the case.

We know the gowns were manufactured in China, before being delivered in 72 lots to the UK between August and October 2020 - but they were not inspected for some time after their arrival.

A lawyer for PPE Medpro told the court that, on delivery, the gowns were kept in shipping containers for “at least three months” before being moved to storage sites, where some were unloaded and put on pallets for storage in warehouses. The Department of Health rejected them on 23 December 2020.

The DoH submitted a "Storage Costs Spreadsheet" - produced by an NHS supply chain company – as evidence, saying it shows that the gowns were in warehouses between February 2021 and May 2024.

The government tried to claim more than £8.5m for the cost it "incurred in having to store and dispose" of the gowns but was unsuccessful in the judgment today.

It's not clear where the gowns are now, or if they've been disposed of. We have asked the Department of Health and Social Care for more information.

Image source, Getty Images

Baroness Mone has now reacted to the High Court ruling, echoing her husband's earlier assessment that "it is nothing less than an establishment win for the government in a case that was too big to lose".

Writing on X, she claims the government "pivoted to an entirely new argument" about the lack of "original 'source documentation' around sterilisation" after PPE Medpro had "won its original pleaded case".

"This quantum leap of faith on the part of the judge gave the government an overall win," she says.

"To use a simple analogy, if a car looks, feels, and drives like, say, a Range Rover, then unless you can show how the car is assembled by the manufacturer, it’s not a Range Rover!"

If you're just joining us, here's a quick breakdown of the High Court's ruling, which came down just after 10:30 this morning in London:

• Mrs Justice Cockerill found PPE Medpro, a firm linked to Baroness Michelle Mone, breached its £122m contract to supply 25m sterile surgical gowns to the NHS during the Covid pandemic
• The judge said the firm had accepted the requirement that the gowns had to comply with a "validated sterilisation process"
• However, the ruling said the gowns lacked the "notified body number" required to mark them as sterilised and that PPE Medpro had provided no evidence the process had taken place
• PPE Medpro - which filed a notice to appoint an administrator yesterday - was ordered to pay back £121,999,219 plus interest
• Mrs Justice Cockerill said the government was getting the full amount back because PPE Medpro had unsuccessfully tried to argue the gowns could be resold
• She, however, dismissed the Department of Health's claim to £8m in storage costs - the gowns were never used
• Mone's husband Doug Barrowman - who led the PPE Medpro consortium - dismissed the ruling as "a travesty of justice", arguing the government sought to "divert attention away from monumental PPE overspent"

Our reporters at the High Court are poring over the full ruling - we can now bring you a bit more from PPE Medpro's defence.

The company argued that it should have been advised on how to comply with the contract it had signed with the Department of Health and Social Care.

Mrs Justice Cockerill said that this was not the case.

The court ruled that, as per long-established legal principle, the government wasn’t required to give advice to Medpro.

Freya Scott-Turner
Live reporter, reporting from the High Court

A huge case, involving huge sums - but it was a relatively quiet scene in the courtroom today.

With neither Barrowman nor Mone making an appearance, and only 10 or so journalists in attendance, there were plenty of spare seats at the back of the room.

The legal teams filed out swiftly after the quick judgment, leaving a few of us to pore over the full text.

We can bring you a bit more from the statement from Doug Barrowman's team.

The statement says that - although the trial found the company had not conclusively proved that a "valid sterilisation process" had been used for the gowns - such documents have been obtained since the trial.

"Since the trial, PPE Medpro has obtained this documentation by sending an investigator to China. The documentation now obtained conclusively proves that the gowns were properly sterilised in compliance with international sterilization standard EN ISO 11137."

The statement claims the process has been "an attempt to divert attention away from the government and its monumental overspend on PPE".

We've just received a statement from a spokesperson for Michelle Mone's husband, Doug Barrowman, who describes today's ruling as "a travesty of justice".

As a reminder, PPE Medpro is a consortium led by Barrowman.

"[Mrs Justice Cockerill] gave the DHSC an establishment win despite the mountain of evidence in court against such a judgement," the spokesperson says.

"Her judgment bears little resemblance to what actually took place during the month-long trial, where PPE Medpro convincingly demonstrated that its gowns were sterile.

"This judgment is a white wash of the facts and shows that justice was being seen to be done, where the outcome was always certain for the DHSC and the government. This case was simply too big for the government to lose."

Image source, Getty Images

We can now bring you further details from Mrs Justice Cockerill, who has said the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) did not "effectively reject the gowns".

PPE Medpro had argued to the court that DHSC lost the right to reject the gowns due to delays.

Mrs Justice Cockerill says that the DHSC had an agent who could have inspected the gowns in China. So the rejection of the gowns – coming in December 2020, after they arrived in the UK – did not occur within a reasonable time.

While the judge has allowed DHSC to recover the "full value" of the gowns, she added that the department cannot claim £8m for storage costs.

The court finishes with some remarks from Mrs Justice Cockerill who is leaving for a new appointment.

She references the support of "excellent" counsel as well as "brilliant" back office teams.

She calls it an "immense privilege" to work with the "best team in any court in this country".

Mrs Justice Cockerill has now ordered the defendant to pay the claimant a sum of £121,999,219 in damages.

This is due by 16:00 on 15 October 2025.

Mrs Justice Cockerill is talking about the sterilisation process that the contract between the government and PPE Medpro required the gowns to go through.

Offering quite technical descriptions of what was required, the judge says that gowns had to be sterilised in such a way as to comply with a "validated sterilisation process".

PPE Medpro accepted this requirement, she says.

The gowns lacked the "notified body numbers" to mark them as sterilised, required by EU legislation, she says.

Zoe Conway
Employment correspondent, reporting from the High Court

Mrs Justice Cockerill says PPE Medpro breached the contract.