MPs reacted with outrage following the growing controversy over a PPE company linked to the Conservative peer Michelle Mone after the Guardian reported that Mone referred the company to Tory ministers Michael Gove and Theodore Agnew. Mone’s referral got PPE Medpro into a ‘VIP lane’ securing it two contracts worth more than £203m. Millions of pounds of PPE Medpro’s profits were later transferred to a secret offshore trust fund of which Mone and her family members were beneficiaries.
Neil O’Brien, the junior health minister, defended the government’s actions, denying that political connections played a role in the distribution of contracts, adding that the referral system connected ministers with members of the public who wanted to help plug shortages.
During the urgent question tabled by Labour’s deputy leader, Angela Rayner, Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi said it was ‘absolutely sickening, shameful and unforgivable’ that ‘chums of the Conservative party were profiteering’ as the country struggled with the pandemic