Michelle Mone has admitted that she stands to benefit from £60 million PPE firm profits.

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). After breaking their silence last week in a PPE Medpro funded documentary, the couple spoke to the BBC’s Laura Kuensberg this weekend.

The couple denied any links to the firm until very recently.

PPE Medpro was created during the pandemic, which Doug Barrowman says was because they wanted ‘to do their bit’.

Mr Barrowman said: ‘The problem is there were 14,000 people trying to supply PPE to the government, and they didn’t have the resources to prioritise. For new suppliers, they had to find a way to vet them, so the Cabinet Office looked after what became known as the high priority lane (VIP lane), which none of us knew about at the time.’

Michelle Mone said that she didn’t know about the VIP lane, and that she found out about it from the media.

Lady Mone added: ‘Everyone in the DHSC, NHS, the Cabinet Office, the government, knew of my involvement, and they asked us to both declare our interests.’

But pressed on whether she told the House of Lords authorities, she said: ‘I discussed it with the Cabinet Office, and as far as I was aware, you do not declare your interest in the House of Lords, if you are not a director, you’re not a shareholder, you’re not financially benefitting.’

She was told that she only needs to put it in writing and declare her interest with the Cabinet Office, she says.

But the House of Lords rules say that members have a clear duty to provide information which might reasonably be thought by others to influence their actions, to which she said: ‘I was only doing as I was told.’

It was revealed that PPE Medpro made a return on investment of about £60 million.

Mr Barrowman said: ‘We made a good return for the risk involved and the risk was considerable.

'We had to fund all the working capital, to fund these contracts with manufacturers we had to pay 50% up front.’

He added: ‘I led the consortium, the money comes to the Isle of Man because that is fundamentally where I live, it was on my tax return, it goes into a trust for the benefit of my family.

Asked if she admits that with the way that the finances are currently, that one day she and her children will benefit from the money, Lady Mone said: ‘If God forbid my husband passes away before me, then I’m a beneficiary, as well as his children, and my children, so yes of course.’

But she added: ‘It’s not my money, it’s not my kids money, it’s my husband’s money.’

Lady Mone said: ‘I did make an error in what I said to the press, I wasn’t trying to pull the wool over anyone’s eyes, and I’m sorry for not saying straight out that I was involved.

Yet Laura Kuensberg said: ‘It was more than just an error.

‘Over a period of months, you said again and again, that you had no connection, and your lawyers even said to some journalists, it would be defamatory, they’d be libelling you, if they told the truth.’

Of the UK DHSC she said: ‘It’s appalling that over £9.1 billion was over ordered, with five years of stock of PPE, when it only has a shelf life of two years.

‘We’ve been their scapegoats, and they have destroyed our lives for over two years because the narrative suited them.’