Tom Borman, LawFuel contributing editor
A High Court judge has ruled that PPE Medpro, the supplier linked to former lingerie queen Baroness Michelle Mone and her husband Doug Barrowman, breached its 2020 contract to deliver 25 million sterile surgical gowns to the Department of Health and Social Care.
Mone, who grew up in Glasgow and became a working class success story making her fortune with the lingerie brand Ultimo. She entered the House of Lords as a Conservative peer, an honour bestowed by former Prime Minister David Cameron for her work forstalling Scottish independence.
She has long presented her life as a success story. But she and her husband, wealthy financial advisor and investor Doug Barrowman who are now facing scrutiny on several fronts despite pleading her case in the court of public opinion.
The Court found that the gowns weren’t validated as sterile, the CE marking position was defective, and the NHS couldn’t use them. The result is a court ordering the repayment of roughly £122 million to the government. The judge rejected Medpro’s counterclaims.
The Mayfair Lawyer
Dan Morrison: the brief on the bruiser
Dan Morrison, 52, (pictured) represented Michelle Mone and Douglas Barrowman on the NCA probe and fronted PPE Medpro’s defence in the DHSC’s £122 million High Court claim over allegedly defective gowns.
He is at least the fifth solicitor they have used since the scandal began. Mone sought him out after he gave her a “kicking” in 2022 while acting for banker Richard Lynton-Jones, whom she had insulted; she later settled that racial abuse case for a sum reported to exceed £50,000.
A former Mishcon de Reya partner of more than a decade, Morrison founded Mayfair boutique Grosvenor Law, which markets an aggressive litigation style. His best-known win came in 2012, when John Terry was acquitted of a racism charge after the court accepted he was posing a question and full footage was unavailable.
Mone’s hiring Morrison signaled a hard-edged strategy on both criminal exposure and the civil recovery push she was seeking, and continues to seek with efforts to restore her reputation and continue the legal fight.
Civil servants raised questions about conflicts of interest, but Mone wrote to assure them she stood to gain no benefit.
Why it matters for lawyers
This was a classic contract case with regulatory teeth: specification, conformity assessment, sterility validation and CE-marking obligations, all baked into the written terms and then tested the old-fashioned way in court – with a feisty fighter in the form of Dan Morrison.
The legal spine
The June 26, 2020 order required 25 million sterile gowns and compliance with all applicable PPE laws, including proper conformity assessment, documentation and CE marking.
The rejection and recall clauses allowed DHSC to reject a whole delivery if a reasonable sample failed in material respects. You don’t need to like the procurement, but the paper trail is painfully clear.
The court found the gowns were not, contractually speaking, sterile or properly validated as sterile, and that the CE-marking position didn’t stack up. Evidence cited test results showing widespread sterility failures. All of which is a breach, rather than a rounding error.
Counterclaims were binned by the Court, too. Medpro’s attempt to say the department neglected its own contractual duties was rejected. The court called the “we relied on DHSC advice” theory “utterly unrealistic” for a supplier pitching in a so-called fast lane for nine-figure public contracts.
Procurement reality check and the VIP lane
PPE Medpro was referred into the government’s expedited channel. The judgment records the referral and then moves on to the dispositive point: unusable gowns that failed the spec. If you want policy lectures, Parliament is down the hall. In the KBD you win or lose on the contract.
Now comes the hard part for the Government. Medpro has filed for administration and recent accounts show thin pickings. A paper judgment isn’t a bank transfer. There’s doubtless a lot more to come, asset tracing and POCA-adjacent skirmishing to dominate the endgame.
The Times reported Syed Rahman, partner at a financial litigation legal practice, who said that if the government were unable to recover the money from PPE Medpro, it would “pierce the corporate veil” and target the beneficiaries.
The Government will brandish the order but administrators will talk priorities and a lot of other insolvency talk.
There’s already been a £75m restraint order over assets linked to Mone and Barrowman in late 2023. That was under the Proceeds of Crime Act and sits on a different track, but it tells you how seriously enforcement bodies are treating this ecosystem. 5sblaw.com
The NCA’s criminal investigation is still live; arrests have happened, charges have not. Civil liability today doesn’t predetermine criminal outcomes tomorrow, but timing and publicity travel together.
For a top lawyer like Dan Morrison the battle will not be over. For the Baroness, the stellar success story of the lingerie magnate is being severely tested and the street fighter instinct in all the principal parties will be tested.
