Michelle Mone has ‘no wish’ to continue as Tory in House of Lords | UK News

Baroness Michelle Mone says she has “no wish to return” to the House of Lords as a Tory peer.

Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch said Mone should be stripped of her peerage after a firm linked to her, PPE Medpro, was ordered to repay £122m for breaching a Covid contract.

In a letter to Badenoch, the Scottish entrepreneur said she would not return to the Tories “assuming there still is a Conservative Party before the next election”.

Mone was made a peer by Prime Minister David Cameron in 2015, but took a leave of absence and lost the Tory whip following the PPE revelations.

The Conservatives said in December 2023 that she was no longer a member of the party. However, this was later disputed by Mone.

In her letter to Badenoch, she said there “seems to be a bit of amnesia” about her loss of the whip, suggesting that she removed it herself when she chose to go on leave.

Mone continued: “You will be pleased to hear that once I do clear my name, I have no wish to return to the Lords as a Conservative peer.

“That’s assuming there still is a Conservative Party before the next general election.”

Badenoch was among several politicians, including Chancellor Rachel Reeves, who called for Mone to relinquish her peerage after the High Court judgment.

On Thursday, Badenoch told News that what she had heard from the case against PPE Medpro was “enough” for her to be stripped of her title.

She added: “I want to make sure that people can see that the Conservative Party is a party of integrity.

“That’s why we removed Michelle Mone.

“And it’s very, very important that people see that politicians, whether they’re in the Commons or in the Lords, are acting above board.”

Peerages can only be removed by an act of Parliament. The SNP have called for the UK government to take that step.

PPE Medpro, which was set up by a consortium led by Mone’s husband, Doug Barrowman, was awarded lucrative contracts to supply 25 million medical gowns to the NHS during the pandemic.

However, the equipment has been in storage since 2020 after the company failed to prove it was correctly sterilised.

Mone described the court ruling as “nothing less than an establishment win for the government in a case that was too big to lose”.

A spokesman for Mr Barrowman described it as “a travesty of justice”.