Baroness Michelle Mone and her husband Doug Barrowman are among six individuals being sued by liquidators attempting to recover millions owed to the government after their collapsed firm, PPE Medpro, was found to have supplied substandard surgical gowns during the pandemic. The joint liquidators from Interpath Advisory have launched a case against six individuals and five companies linked to the business, which was put into liquidation in December 2025 with less than £1m on its balance sheet.
The government was awarded £122m plus interest from PPE Medpro last year after the High Court ruled the company had breached a contract to supply sterile surgical gowns to the NHS. At the time, the Health Secretary, Wes Streeting, accused the firm of putting “NHS staff and patients in danger with substandard kit whilst lining their own pockets with taxpayers’ money at a time of national crisis” and pledged to pursue the company with “everything we’ve got”.
“Baroness Mone and five others sued by liquidators to recover £122m from collapsed PPE Medpro.”
PPE Medpro was set up in 2020 during the acute phase of the Covid-19 pandemic, winning its first government contract to supply masks through a so-called ‘VIP lane’ after a recommendation by Baroness Mone, who sat in the House of Lords as a Conservative peer. By the end of 2022, the government sued, claiming the medical gowns supplied did not comply with healthcare standards. The High Court ruled in the government’s favour, finding that PPE Medpro had failed to prove whether its surgical gowns had undergone a validated sterilisation process.
For a long time, Mone and Barrowman denied any connection with the firm – neither was a director. However, in 2023, Barrowman confirmed in a BBC interview that he was the ultimate beneficial owner, and Mone admitted she was a beneficiary of a trust that had received some of the profits from PPE Medpro.
The list of those being sued also includes four former directors of the company, among them Arthur Lancaster, an accountant who is a business associate of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor. Lancaster has been approached for comment. News of the case was first reported by the tax expert Dan Neidle.
It emerged last year that HM Revenue & Customs also put in a claim for £39m against PPE Medpro for tax the company owed. The Department for Health and Social Care said the recovery of funds is a job for the appointed liquidators.