Michelle Mone has broken her silence over the PPE scandal.

In a documentary uploaded to YouTube over the weekend, the island resident acknowledged that she had lied to the press about her involvement with the company PPE Medpro.

Through her lawyers, Lady Mone has previously denied any involvement in the firm.

PPE Medpro was awarded two contracts by the UK’s Department of Health and Social Care (UK DHSC) in June 2020 – the first an £81m contract to supply masks and the second, worth £122m to supply surgical gowns.

The contracts were referred by Baroness Mone under the ‘VIP lane’, a system which was introduced to help the UK Government choose between large numbers of supply offers during the pandemic.

Her husband, Douglas Barrowman, was chairman of PPE Medpro.

But the company is now being sued by the UK DHSC for £122 million which the department paid for surgical gowns that it claims were not fit for use.

PPE Medpro is also being investigated by the National Crime Agency (NCA).

Whilst Lady Mone admitted that she had made an ‘error’ in denying her involvement with PPE Medpro to the press, her defence was that the UK government knew that she was involved with the company.

She said: ‘I made an error in what I said to the press. I regret not saying to the press straight away, “yes I am involved and the government knew I was involved”.’

She said that her legal team advised her and her husband not to comment and not to speak of her involvement in the firm.

Lady Mone said that she was telling the truth when she stated she was neither a shareholder nor a director in the company and she was not financially benefitting directly from the firm, although she later acknowledged that she may indirectly benefit financially due to her marriage with Mr Barrowman. The documentary, which was funded by PPE Medpro, also points the finger at the UK DHSC.

Of her involvement, she said: ‘I was a liaison person – I brought it all together.

'I wanted the guys to succeed, I wanted the NHS to succeed. I wanted a win-win situation for everyone.

‘Both myself and my husband declared our interests, and if they had any issue with that whatsoever, when they knew of my involvement and my husband’s involvement, why did they ever give the contracts in the first place?’

The couple, who live in St Mark’s, also argued that they had saved the UK government tens of millions of pounds due to the firm’s competitive pricing structure. In the same documentary, Mr Barrowman said: ‘We were (charging) on average £3 a gown under what the government had been paying, so we saved them £75 million there.’

He also said that the masks the company sold had saved the government £25 million.