Firefighters don protective clothing including sterile surgical gowns as they work alongside a critical care nurse before treating a COVID-19 patient in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) at Queen Alexandra Hospital in Portsmouth, southern England, in a March 23, 2021 file photo. ADRIAN DENNIS/AFP/GETTY

A British High Court judge ruled Wednesday that a company linked to an underwear tycoon must repay the government more than 121 million pounds ($163 million) for breaching a contract to supply 25 million surgical gowns during the coronavirus pandemic.

In an 87-page ruling, Justice Sara Cockerill found that the company, PPE Medpro, had "breached the contract" and that the Department of Health and Social Care was "entitled to the price of the gowns as damages," though not to the cost of storing the gowns.

The judge said the gowns "were not, contractually speaking, sterile, or properly validated as being sterile" and as a result, they "could not be used as sterile gowns."

PPE Medpro, which was established as the pandemic erupted in the spring of 2020, was a consortium led by Doug Barrowman, the husband of Michelle Mone, who had made her fortune though her lingerie brand Ultimo.

The consortium was awarded the lucrative contracts by the former Conservative administration led by Prime Minister Boris Johnson to supply personal protective equipment, or PPE, during the pandemic, after Mone had recommended it to ministers.

Under the fast-track model employed by the government at the time, preferential treatment was given to companies recommended by politicians. The case against PPE Medpro has come to symbolize the hundreds of millions of pounds wasted through hastily awarded contracts for protective equipment.

None of the gowns were used by the state-run National Health Service.

The new Labour government, which came into power in July 2024, sued PPE Medpro over allegations that it breached a deal for the gowns as the items were "faulty" by not being sterile.

Treasury chief Rachel Reeves, who has been leading work within government to claw back money lost during the pandemic, welcomed the judgment and said the recouped money will go to fund schools, the National Health Service and communities.

"We want our money back," she said. "We are getting our money back."

Though Mone wasn't on the face of it involved in the company at the time of its launch, she soon came under fire for denying connections to PPE Medpro.

By the end of 2023, she admitted to repeatedly lying about her links to a company and had voiced her regret at threatening to sue journalists who alleged she had ties to the firm.

Mone was appointed to the House of Lords, Parliament's unelected revising chamber, in 2015 by then Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron. She has taken a leave of absence from Parliament to "clear her name" over the scandal.

Both Mone and Barrowman, who have denied wrongdoing, were furious at the judgment.

Mone described it as "shocking but all too predictable" and "nothing less than an establishment win for the government in a case that was too big for them to lose."

Her husband blasted it as a "travesty of justice" and "a whitewash of the facts."

Johnson's government was hit with several scandals during and after the coronavirus pandemic, including facing fierce public backlash — and being fined personally — for breaching the country's COVID safety regulations by allowing parties at government offices during lockdowns.

Source