Baroness Michelle Mone, once a prominent Conservative peer and businesswoman, has declared she has "no wish to return" to the House of Lords as a Tory, as political and legal storms continue to swirl around her involvement in a controversial pandemic-era contract. The declaration comes after a High Court ruling ordered PPE Medpro—a company linked to Mone and founded by her husband, Doug Barrowman—to repay nearly £122 million to the UK government for breaching a contract to supply surgical gowns during the Covid-19 crisis. The dispute has laid bare deep tensions within the Conservative Party and raised fresh questions about accountability and standards in public life.
According to BBC News, Mone wrote to Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch, stating: "You will be pleased to hear that once I do clear my name, I have no wish to return to the Lords as a Conservative peer. That's assuming there still is a Conservative Party before the next general election." The letter follows mounting calls from across the political spectrum—including Chancellor Rachel Reeves and Badenoch herself—for Mone to relinquish her peerage after the High Court’s damning verdict.
Baroness Mone, who was made a peer by then-Prime Minister David Cameron in 2015, has been at the center of controversy since revelations emerged about her role in securing government contracts for PPE Medpro at the height of the pandemic. The company, led by Barrowman and introduced to the government’s so-called “VIP fast-lane” by Mone, was tasked with supplying 25 million medical gowns to the National Health Service. However, the equipment has languished in storage since 2020, after the company failed to prove it was correctly sterilised—a point repeatedly cited in court proceedings and by critics.
As Sky News reported, Mone has not only denied any wrongdoing but has also accused Badenoch of using "reckless" and "inflammatory" language that could prejudice ongoing investigations. In her letter, Mone wrote: "I was shocked to the core to read about your inflammatory language on BBC Radio yesterday calling for me to resign from the House of Lords. You are commenting on a live criminal investigation that could prejudice the outcome of any trial, and in so doing, you are reportable to the attorney general for breach of and contempt of court."
The legal troubles for the couple do not end with the High Court ruling. A separate criminal investigation by the National Crime Agency (NCA) is ongoing, with assets linked to Mone and Barrowman worth £75 million frozen. Mone maintains that the NCA investigation is unrelated to the PPE Medpro contracts and insists that she did not mislead the government or personally profit from the deals. She further clarified, as quoted by The Daily Mail, "I have never received a penny from PPE Medpro. Reference to £29million being placed in a trust for me and my kids is a lie. It is a trust set up by my husband for the benefit of all our kids, not just mine. I have no entitlement to any of this money whatsoever."
Despite these denials, the government and opposition parties are under increasing pressure to act. Badenoch, speaking to BBC News, said, "I want to make sure that people can see that the Conservative Party is a party of integrity. That's why we removed Michelle Mone. And it's very, very important that people see that politicians, whether they're in the Commons or in the Lords, are acting above board." She added, "Where people do wrong, they should be punished. They should face the full force of the law and this is something that I very strongly believe in. And as the prosecution against her continues, they should throw the book at her for every single bit of wrongdoing that has taken place."
Peerages in the UK can only be removed by an act of Parliament—a rarely used power. The Scottish National Party (SNP) has called on the government to take this step, while the Conservative Party has made it clear that Mone would not be welcomed back into the fold. As a party spokesman explained, "Baroness Mone has not been in receipt of the Conservative whip since she took a leave of absence from the House of Lords, and she is not a Conservative Party member. Baroness Mone was formally written to yesterday by the Lords Chief Whip, and informed that she would not receive the Conservative whip were she ever to return. Under Kemi Badenoch's leadership, the Conservative Party expects parliamentarians to maintain the highest standards, and on this Baroness Mone has fallen well short."
For her part, Mone has attempted to shift focus to the broader context of the government’s pandemic procurement efforts. She argued that her role in introducing PPE Medpro to the VIP lane was no different from other Conservative MPs and peers who sought to help provide essential equipment during a national emergency. In her words: "So Kemi, my role was exactly the same as all other Conservative MPs and peers who were trying to help provide PPE… if I have done wrong, then so have all the others in the VIP lane. In which case, you should be calling out for them to resign as well. That's if you manage to work out what it is they are supposed to have done wrong." She named former health secretary Matt Hancock, Lord Agnew, Lord Feldman, and Lord Chadlington among 51 "mostly Conservative peers and MPs" who also introduced providers to the VIP lane.
The public backlash has been swift and significant. An online petition launched by the Covid-19 Bereaved Families for Justice, calling for Mone to step down from the Lords, attracted 60,000 signatures within 24 hours, as reported by Sky News. Social media has also been awash with heated debate, with some users expressing outrage at what they see as a lack of accountability, while others warn against prejudging the outcome of ongoing investigations.
Notably, Mone has described the High Court ruling as "nothing less than an establishment win for the government in a case that was too big to lose," while a spokesman for Barrowman called it "a travesty of justice." The couple and their supporters maintain that they are being targeted unfairly, and Mone has gone so far as to accuse the government of pursuing a personal vendetta against her, citing the toll the situation has taken on her family and referencing the dangers of public vilification.
Meanwhile, the equipment at the heart of the scandal—millions of surgical gowns—remains unused, stored away due to unresolved questions about sterilisation. The financial and reputational fallout from the case continues to reverberate through Westminster, with questions mounting about how pandemic contracts were awarded and who, ultimately, will be held accountable.
As the Conservative Party seeks to distance itself from the scandal and uphold its image of integrity, and as investigations continue, the fate of Baroness Mone’s peerage—and her place in British public life—hangs in the balance. One thing is clear: this is a saga that has left few untouched and has prompted a national conversation about trust, transparency, and responsibility in times of crisis.
