Baroness Michelle Mone has insisted ministers knew about her involvement with a PPE firm "from the very beginning", as she faced calls to step back permanently from the House of Lords.The peer dug in to the row by hitting out at Rishi Sunak after he said he was taking the issue "incredibly seriously".Sir Keir Starmer said she should be expelled from the Lords as he urged the Government to "come clean" about the scandal he described as a "shocking disgrace".The Labour leader piled pressure on ministers to answer "serious questions" about what they knew, including who started the conversations with Lady Mone in the first place.A Government minister said on Monday that she should not return to the Lords after admitting lying over a PPE contract. Energy minister Lord Callanan told Sky News he could not comment on the details of the case given the ongoing criminal and legal actions about it.
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00:00 Baroness Moon, the blonde business titan who established the Ultimo Bra-brand,
00:05 would once not have been an obvious candidate for the Lords.
00:08 But it says a good deal about the debasement of the Second Chamber under the Tories
00:11 that the ennoblement of any woman, however unimpressive, now causes no surprise.
00:16 Lord Cameron is, right now, engaging in important work
00:20 in a marshalling and international response to Israeli actions in Gaza.
00:23 But when he can spare the time, perhaps he could let us know what it was about the bra tycoon
00:28 that qualified her to feature in his resignation honours list.
00:30 No doubt he admired the entrepreneurial spirit that enabled her to make her way,
00:35 from a deprived background in Glasgow, to success and riches as the manufacturer of padded bras
00:40 and producer of seiktan and weight loss pills. But to the Lords?
00:44 During the pandemic, there were a lot of companies bidding for contracts for protective equipment,
00:48 at a time when it seemed the government couldn't get rid of public money fast enough.
00:52 In the event, it spent £12bn on protective gear,
00:56 of which £4bn was unusable. Lady Moan's husband, businessman Doug Barrowman,
01:01 offloaded 200m worth of Chinese equipment through his company, PPE Medpro, leaving £60m in profit
01:09 for the family, which was invested subsequently in a trust to benefit Lady Moan and her children.
01:14 Medpro is still being investigated by the National Crime Agency for suspected fraud.
01:19 There was nothing wrong in bidding for a contract, but to exploit personal contacts by calling
01:23 Michael Gove and Lord Agnew in the Cabinet Office, so as to get on to the VIP fast track to a public
01:29 procurement contract, was wrong. And not to mention it in any parliamentary declaration
01:33 of interests was wrong too. So was lying about it for three years. And what was worse,
01:38 they threatened newspapers which thought to publicise that she and her husband were linked
01:42 to the company, with prosecution. She did it, she said, to protect her family,
01:47 the last excuse of the 21st century hypocrite. Let's consider what she said to the BBC's Laura
01:52 Coonsburg this Sunday. After everything you can't see what you've done wrong when you've admitted
01:55 today that you lied to the press and by extension you lied to the public. Laura, saying to the press
02:02 I'm not involved to protect my family, can I just make this clear, it's not a crime.
02:07 Once, no one in British public life could have said such a thing. Lying was such a big deal,
02:12 that people flinched from saying the word itself. Lying was the most dishonourable thing you could
02:16 be accused of. And now, we've got a member of the upper house saying in public that if falsehood is
02:21 acceptable, because it's not a crime, so anything that is not actually criminal is not immoral.
02:27 Really? Nadine Dorris, whom Boris Johnson considered for a place in the Lords,
02:33 has noted today that Baroness Moan should never have been given a peerage in the first place.
02:37 Yes, obviously, she should lose her title, she has already lost the Conservative whip,
02:42 but it's David Cameron we'd like to hear from here. Just why was she appointed?
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