Michelle Mone has finally admitted she lied about the tens of millions of pounds profit they stand to make from their shameful PPE deal

Watching the select committee questioning Sunak over which airlines are willing to begin to transport people to Rwanda. It is known that every airline approached has turned down the contract ad it would damage their reputation.

Sunak went on to say that the negotiations are private.

I feel another “PPE” type scandal coming on. This should be entirely transparent.

Whitewavemark2

I see Gove is treating the House with contempt by announcing policy in a speech outside of parliament.

They consider themselves above the accepted rules don’t they?

We need a much stronger Speaker. People like Gove are running rings around him.

Good - the dirty old man Bone has lost his seat.

How many more to go?

growstuff M: well they would say that, wouldn't they?

Do you think the Government would say they made the mistake and placed an order - by contract - for good which were illegal to make, sell, or distribute. I can only tell you what was in the Government's daily covid update - which incidentally are still being sent to subscribers. I subscribed from email one. By then, February 2020 I had already ordered my PPE for my care people, and had some.

I might still have it on my computer, though whether I can access it now I am not sure. What I can say is that eBay removed from sale all PPE listed without a CE Mark on the directions of the Government, who then themselves broke the law by ordering by contract PPE knowing that none of the firms had CE clearance. That caused the deaths of thousands of elderly vulnerable people.

Katie59 Tue 19-Dec-23 09:04:23
If the PPE was “unusable” I’m wondering why they were paid at all, normally if a product is not up to specification you don’t get paid.

Someone must have approved and accepted the PPE why was it not rejected at that stage?.

Katie, It had nothing to do with quality or specifications. It may have been OK. It just did not have the CE certification by the EU standards, because it was not cleared by the EU and had to be up until 31/12/2020 when we finally left the EU. The officials who placed those contract orders did so illegally, and if the firms who made them did not realise that, they have not done anything wrong.

CoolCoco If the Government are arguing that the PPE was not up to standard, it was because it could not be EU certified, because the EU could not have tested it to their standards.

If the Government has to prove that if they prosecute the companies, which no doubt retain the samples and the finished products. The UK was forbidden in law to make their own PPE while we were still bound by EU regulations. That was the law which said IT IS ILLEGAL TO MANUFACTURE, SELL OR DISTRIBUTE PPE which was not certified by the EU. The EU had apportioned the manufacture of items - everything - and German companies were producing PPE for EU consumption. They had companies in other countries, but not in UK. They kept all their for themselves, even though they knew we would need them, and thousands of elderly people in care homes died, because what stocks the NHS had could not be distributed to them. The Government had to ''Save the NHS''.

There is another point to consider too: there were reports in the media that Trump had illegally redirected PPE made in China and destined for France. France made the same mistake as UK: they forgot that even in a pandemic, they could not distribute PPE made outside the EU. Whether any other EU members made the same mistake and kept quiet, is unknown. If the UK Government had not warned people in that early covid update email, no one would have been any the wiser - at least not me. I don't know how many subscribers there were to the daily updates. The information Act could release the email addresses and the manufacturers contracted to make PPE could presumably use that in any defence of Government prosecutions. I am no lawyer, but I bet the prosecutions fail.

Eloethan: why should the money be paid back to the Government? They made an illegal contract to manufacture and supply goods to be used in a pandemic when they were not passed by the EU council.

That meant that if ANYONE DIED in places where uncertified PPE was distributed, there relatives could sue the Government and possibly the manufacturers for damages. It was that serious. The PPE could have been stored and used after the 31/12/2020, and if it was not, that too was the fault of the Government, because from 1/1/21 it would have been legal. Before we joined the EU in the 1970s what we used for PPE was serviceable. I can show masks bought with the CE mark absolute rubbish.

The manufacturers could presumably prove that what they made was to Government standards, even if it was not EU standards.

The government had a lot to answer for in 2020. Even HM Customs made mistakes. They charged me - for one - customs duty on a parcel from Germany.

MaizieD You can believe it or not: it is true. Manufacturers of goods they made knew the EU Regulations. How many UK manufacturers were contracted to make PPE in the years before we left? I think you will find very few of them. PPE shelf life doesn't really come into it, unlest NHS Trust managers are making that the excuse for not stocking enough. We do not hear of other EU Members running out of PPE, yet they are bound by the same shelf life under the CE laws.

I can only say what the Government bulletin says, that it was illegal to make, sell or distribute PPE without a CE label.

When I saw that, I contacted sellers on auction sites asking if there products were CE certified, in February, and they all wrote saying ''They don't have to be, because we left the EU'', NOONE knew that we were still bound by the rules.

It wasn't until someone had the bright idea of calling masks ''face coverings'' that they could be sold in UK

I am not supporting the Duchess and her family, but I do not believe they are as culpable as the Government, unless they were previously manufacturing goods of any sort under the EU guidelines. Comments against them should be made only after they have been found guilty in law.

.CoolCoco Masks made to EU standards are not packaged separately, or double wrapped. They always come in boxes, as do gloves, though in OT they would be individually wrapped. Aprons were the same: they came in single wrap bags of 100 with a slit for removal. It was the same for other items. Gowns could be laundered.

Half way through 2020 we heard on the news that hospital staff were not using the PPE properly and were discarding it and gowning up in ICU each time they left a patient, and it was being wasted, and was contributing towards the chaos and shortage. Patients on respirators were not nursed in the usual way, and for staff to remove a gown every time they left one bed and went on to another, then repeating it if they had to return, were wasting resources.

Dinahmo: perhaps the BBC are hedging their bets. I would wait until the Government actually prosecutes, because I say it was illegal to sign contracts - any contracts - in 2020. If there had been a mechanism whereby the EU could certify the PPE before it left the factory, then it could have been given the all clear, but there was no such availability. It could have been sterile, triple wrapped, absolutely perfect, but if the factories did not have CE clearance, IT WAS ILLEGAL.

You cannot jump to conclusions and accuse, no matter how much money is involved. Until their is evidence that her husband's factory actually produced inferior goods, or charged too highly for them that the cost was unreasonable, (perhaps they paid their workers extra to work in a lockdown)
They cannot be accused of profiteering my making substandard goods.
How do you know they were substandard? Was it because you were told they were, or did you see the specifications on the order sheet?

All this discussion of pulling anyone to pieces in this way - whether a Peer of the Realm or anyone else, is wrong if the people have not been formally charged and found guilty.

The fact that the blame is placed on the manufacturer for taking money to make goods and pay their workers, is just covering up the fact that the Ministry of Health SHOULD NOT HAVE signed the contract to make goods KNOWING it was illegal.

Unless you can prove that the Baroness and her husband knew that the contract was illegal, they cannot be blamed. All anyone can do is not give them a contract in the future.

GrannyGravy13 If the NHS TRUST managers, and the local authority Emergency Committees knew there was such a short shelf life for PPE, why didn't they keep up with their stocks?

We are hit with a pandemic, and the vital equipment to cope with that wasn't available.

For posters concerned about the shelf life of sterilised PPE, this was advice issued by the Government in March 2020 when already they knew there wasn't enough. At this time too, scientists were arguing about the merits of masks all over the world.

Approval by Health and Safety Executive for use of coveralls as an alternative option for non-surgical gowns
Approval by Health and Safety Executive for use of coveralls as an alternative option for non-surgical gowns
Summary
The Health and Safety Executive has agreed the use of disposable coveralls as an equivalent alternative to non-surgical disposable gowns for the same indications as recently published in PPE Guidance on 6 April.

Letter from Professor Keith Willett, Strategic Incident Director COVID-19, NHS England and NHS Improvement and Professor Yvonne Doyle, Medical Director and Director of Health Protection, Public Health England.

Published 10 April 2020.

Ilizzie2 has succesfully shut down this thread. Mone is not a Duchess.

HousePlantQueen

Ilizzie2 has succesfully shut down this thread. Mone is not a Duchess.

I'm not too sure about this claim that PPE manufacturers had to have 'CE clearance'.

Well, just to liven up this thread; on Twitter:

Michelle Mone has stated that " a senior civil servant offered to make the NCA investigation go away if we paid the government a sum of money" She also says they have a recording and is asking if they should go public............

I wonder if she has any “WhatsApp” messages from the time they were all “lost”?

I can imagine there is frantic activity behind the scenes. No doubt a lot of bargaining going on.

Penny Mordaunt has said all of her messages from Johnson just miraculously disappeared.

They should have honours removed, pay back all the money, their affairs investigated, either a prisoner sentence or a lot if work in the community. Shameless.

If you are sold faulty goods you can return them and get a refund. Why doesn’t this apply here?

I read that Sunak’s father in laws company has been handed a big chunk of an NHS contract.

Oh I do so hope all this will eventually be properly investigated.

It really should be. The UK is getting more corrupt by the year.

We have all these pigs with their noses in the tax payers trough, and at the same time 800000 people had to go to hospital last year to be treated for malnutrition. Children who have rickets and bowed legs, children whose teeth are falling out - not seen since Victorian times. Vitamin D deficiency at all ages, Vitamin B deficiency - particularly in the elderly.

What sort of country are we becoming?

Whitewavemark2

We have all these pigs with their noses in the tax payers trough, and at the same time 800000 people had to go to hospital last year to be treated for malnutrition. Children who have rickets and bowed legs, children whose teeth are falling out - not seen since Victorian times. Vitamin D deficiency at all ages, Vitamin B deficiency - particularly in the elderly.

What sort of country are we becoming?

and still there are people who think that this deterioration in public health, housing, mental health, standards of public behaviour, et al are all the fault of a few hundred desperate folk looking to escape brutality or even, heaven forfend...trying to improve the life chances of their family.

As i have said before on GN, my parents were Conservative voters, decent law abiding people who worked hard. They would be appalled by the standards of public behaviour that is accepted now, by the cheating, the lies, the sneering disregard for the 'little people'. Frankly, I am appalled that anyone thinks it acceptable.

HPQ you are so right. I loathed and despised Margaret Thatcher, but I am pretty confident that all of this would not have happened on her watch. As a lifelong socialist, I feel sorry for any Conservative supporters with a shred of decency as they must be in despair.