PPE firm linked to Michelle Mone wound up after being ordered to pay back £148m

PPE Medpro, the company linked to Baroness Michelle Mone, has been wound up at a specialist companies court.

The decision, made by a judge at a hearing on Thursday, could mean that the Government is unlikely to see most of the £148 million owed to it by the company after it was found to have breached a contract to supply 25 million surgical gowns during the coronavirus pandemic.

PPE Medpro, a consortium led by Lady Mone’s husband, businessman Doug Barrowman, had been ordered to pay the sum after losing a High Court battle against the Department for Health and Social Care (DHSC) in October.

But it filed for administration on September 30, the day before the ruling, with the money still unpaid.

At a hearing at the Insolvency and Companies Court on Thursday, barristers for the three joint administrators asked for PPE Medpro to be kept in administration to pay off some creditors.

Barristers for the DHSC, an unsecured creditor, asked a judge to wind up the company, which they said was “hopelessly insolvent”.

In a ruling, Insolvency and Companies Court Judge Sebastian Prentis placed the company into liquidation.

He said: “I remain of the firm view that the correct course is now to discharge the administrators and to compulsorily wind up the company.”