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Baroness Michelle Mone and her husband, Doug Barrowman, are among a group of individuals now being sued personally as liquidators attempt to recover the millions owed to the taxpayer by his collapsed company, PPE Medpro.
The move marks a sharp escalation in a saga that has come to symbolise the cost of pandemic-era procurement. Having already secured a £122m judgment plus interest against the firm last year, the government is watching as the joint liquidators from Interpath Advisory pursue those who stood behind it. A High Court ruling found that PPE Medpro had breached its contract to supply sterile surgical gowns at the height of the Covid-19 crisis.
Interpath has launched a case against six individuals and five companies linked to the firm, after PPE Medpro was placed into liquidation. Mone and Barrowman have been approached for comment.
PPE Medpro was set up in 2020 as Whitehall scrambled to secure protective equipment for frontline health workers during the most acute phase of the outbreak. It won its first government contract to supply masks through the now-notorious “VIP lane”, following a recommendation by Baroness Mone, who sat in the House of Lords as a Conservative peer. The fast-track route, used for politically connected suppliers, has since drawn heavy criticism from the Commons Public Accounts Committee and become emblematic of how billions were spent under pressure.
By the end of 2022, however, the government had sued the firm, claiming the medical gowns it supplied did not meet the relevant healthcare standards. Last year the High Court found in the government’s favour, ruling that PPE Medpro had failed to prove whether or not its surgical gowns, intended for NHS workers, had undergone a validated sterilisation process.
Winning the case was one thing; recovering the money quite another. The company itself held less than £1m on its balance sheet and was put into liquidation in December 2025. Wes Streeting, then health secretary, accused PPE Medpro 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 firm with “everything we’ve got”.
For business owners watching from the sidelines, the personal dimension is the striking part. Barrowman and Mone were never directors of PPE Medpro, and for a long time denied any connection to it at all. That position unravelled in 2023, when Barrowman confirmed in a BBC interview that he was the company’s ultimate beneficial owner, and Mone admitted she was a beneficiary of a trust that had received some of the firm’s profits.
The individuals being sued also include four former directors of PPE Medpro, among them Arthur Lancaster, an accountant and 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.
The liquidators are not the only creditors circling. It emerged last year that HMRC had also lodged a £39m claim against PPE Medpro for tax it says the company owed.
The Department of Health and Social Care said the recovery of funds was a matter for the appointed liquidators and that it would not be appropriate for ministers to intervene, though it added that the government had been clear it expects robust action. Interpath declined to comment. Separately, the National Crime Agency is continuing a criminal investigation into PPE Medpro.
For the SME community, the case is fast becoming a reference point on the limits of the corporate veil. Where a company has been emptied of cash and wound up, liquidators retain real teeth, and ultimate beneficial owners can find the spotlight turning squarely on them.
