The PPE Medpro Judgment: When Winning in Court Means Losing £122 Million

On 30 September 2025, a high court judge ruled that PPE Medpro must repay £122 million to taxpayers for supplying defective medical gowns during the Covid pandemic. One day earlier, PPE Medpro Ltd was put into administration. The company that must repay £122 million by 15 October has no money. The businessman who extracted £65 million in profits has no legal obligation to pay it back. The government that spent years and millions on legal fees to win this judgment appears to have no mechanism to enforce it.

This is not a story about justice delayed. This is a case study in how Britain’s institutions have been restructured to ensure that certain people never face consequences.

What Actually Happened

In June 2020, PPE Medpro secured two contracts worth £203 million to supply PPE to the NHS. The company had no prior experience in medical supplies. Its route to these contracts ran through Baroness Michelle Mone, who contacted Cabinet Office minister Michael Gove in May 2020. Her approach was processed via the “VIP lane” - a system that prioritized politically connected people over established PPE suppliers with proven track records.

The numbers are straightforward:

• £122 million paid for 25 million sterile surgical gowns
• September 2020: NHS inspectors in Daventry rejected the gowns as defective and non-sterile
• £65 million extracted in profits by Doug Barrowman, Mone’s husband and company owner
• £29 million transferred to a family trust benefiting Mone and their children
• Five years from contract to court judgment
• Zero pounds recovered for taxpayers

The gowns never reached a single NHS facility. They were rejected on inspection because their labels were invalid and showed they had not been certified as sterile - a life-protecting requirement for surgical equipment. For five years, these unusable gowns sat in warehouses while Mone and Barrowman initially denied any involvement in PPE Medpro, before admitting in late 2023 they had lied about their roles.

The Architecture of Unaccountability

The legal structure here reveals how modern Britain actually works. PPE Medpro received £203 million in public money. It paid £137 million to supply-chain companies, leaving £66 million in profit - £39 million of that from the defective gowns contract alone. Barrowman, described as the ultimate beneficial owner, extracted £65 million. The company is now insolvent. The court judgment is against the company, not the man who owns it and profited from it.

This is not a loophole. This is the system functioning as designed.

Limited liability exists to encourage business risk-taking by protecting personal assets from corporate debts. That principle makes sense when applied to genuine entrepreneurs risking their own capital on productive ventures. It makes less sense when applied to a company that secured £203 million in government contracts through political connections, supplied defective medical equipment during a pandemic, extracted tens of millions in profits, then collapsed when ordered to repay the money.

Legal experts confirm there are only narrow circumstances for “piercing the corporate veil” to recover money from individuals behind a limited company. These might include proving transactions were improper or fraudulent - processes that are “costly, complex and time-consuming” with “a real risk of a pyrrhic victory.” Britain’s legal framework, in other words, makes it extremely difficult to recover public money even when a court has ruled that money was paid for worthless goods.

Meanwhile, the National Crime Agency has been investigating PPE Medpro since May 2021 for potential fraud by false representation. Four and a half years into this investigation, no charges have been filed. The NCA raided the couple’s Isle of Man mansion and London home in April 2022. In December 2023, more than £75 million in assets were frozen under the Proceeds of Crime Act. The investigation continues with no disclosed timeline for completion.

The NCA’s explanation: “Investigations must pursue all reasonable lines of inquiry. In serious economic crime investigations these lines of inquiry can be incredibly complex.”

Translation: Do not expect swift justice. Do not expect certain justice. Do expect the process to outlast public attention.

The VIP Lane: A System Built for This

The VIP lane was not an unfortunate pandemic-era improvisation. It was a deliberate choice to prioritize political connections over competence. PPE Medpro was one of dozens of companies that received billions in contracts through this system, which treated recommendations from MPs, peers and ministers as more credible than established track records in medical supply chains.

The logic was never explained because it cannot be explained. There is no rational reason why a company with no PPE experience, introduced by a Conservative peer, should be fast-tracked over suppliers who had been providing medical equipment for decades. Unless the actual purpose of the VIP lane was not to secure the best PPE most efficiently, but to distribute public money to people with the right connections.

That interpretation is supported by what happened next: defective equipment, massive profits, legal structures that shield individuals from consequences, and a justice system that moves so slowly that accountability becomes theoretical.

The Pattern: Privatized Profits, Socialized Losses

This scandal follows a familiar British trajectory. Public money flows to private entities through politically connected channels. When things go wrong, the corporate structure protects individuals while taxpayers absorb the loss. The legal process takes years. By the time any judgment arrives, the money has been extracted, the company is insolvent, and recovery is “complex and time-consuming” if not impossible.

Similar patterns appeared in:

• Track and Trace contracts worth billions with minimal oversight
• Failed government IT projects across multiple departments
• Private companies running public services that collapse leaving chaos
• Financial sector bailouts where institutions were rescued but individuals faced no consequences

The consistent factor is not which party is in government. It is how Britain’s institutions have evolved to ensure that certain people can profit from public money without bearing proportional risk or facing meaningful accountability.

What The Government Actually Won

Rachel Reeves, the Chancellor, declared: “We want our money back. We are getting our money back.” This statement, made immediately after the judgment, was false when spoken. The government has no clear mechanism to recover the £122 million. PPE Medpro is insolvent. Barrowman has no legal obligation to fund the company’s repayment. The limited liability structure protects him unless prosecutors can prove fraud or improper transactions - processes that take years and often fail.

What the government actually won is a court judgment against an empty shell company and a political talking point. What taxpayers lost is £122 million plus the considerable cost of five years of legal proceedings, plus whatever the NCA investigation eventually costs, plus the erosion of any remaining belief that consequences apply to people with the right connections.

The Health Secretary, Wes Streeting, said his department would “work closely with PPE Medpro Limited’s administrators to recover everything we can.” The administrators will find no assets. They will produce a report. The government will recover nothing or a token sum after years of administration costs. Everyone involved knows this. The statements are performative.

The Real Verdict

Five years after PPE Medpro supplied unusable gowns, Britain’s institutions have delivered a judgment that cannot be enforced, an investigation that produces no charges, and a system where £65 million in profits remain with the businessman who extracted them while £122 million in taxpayer money cannot be recovered.

This is not a failure of the system. This is the system working exactly as it has been constructed to work. Political connections provide access. Limited liability provides protection. Legal complexity provides delay. The gap between winning a judgment and recovering money provides escape.

When Chancellor Reeves says the government is “getting our money back,” she is either misinformed about the legal realities or deliberately misleading the public. When the NCA says its four-year investigation requires more time to “pursue all reasonable lines of inquiry,” it is describing an investigative process that moves slower than money can be transferred offshore.

The decline documented here is not economic. It is institutional. Britain has developed a governance model where public money flows easily to private individuals through political channels, but flows back slowly if at all through legal channels. Where winning in court means losing millions. Where justice delayed for half a decade becomes justice denied by corporate structure.

PPE Medpro is not an aberration. It is an example. The VIP lane was not a pandemic emergency measure. It was a window into how allocation actually works when the usual constraints are removed. And this judgment is not accountability. It is the performance of accountability in a system designed to prevent it.

British taxpayers are owed £122 million. A court has said so. They will not receive it. Everyone involved knows they will not receive it. And next time there is a crisis requiring rapid government spending, the same structural features that enabled this will still be in place, ready to produce the same result.

That is the verdict that matters.