Environment Secretary says free football tickets were not from water company
Steve Reed said free football tickets worth nearly £1,800 that he declared were from a telecoms company, not a water firm. Source link
All posts tagged: Michelle Mone
Michelle Mone and the PPE Medpro investigation – podcast | News
When Michelle Mone sat down for an interview with the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg last month it was against the backdrop of serious allegations that she had been facing since 2020. Mone and her husband, the Isle of Man-based businessman Doug Barrowman, are the subjects of a long-running National Crime Agency investigation into allegations of bribery and fraud in their securing of £200m in government contracts for a company, PPE Medpro. She admitted to Kuenssberg that she had lied for years when denying her involvement in the lucrative PPE deals, emphasising in the interview that she was a ‘very successful individual businesswoman’. The Guardian investigations correspondent, David Conn, tells Nosheen Iqbal that the admission of lying was welcome but that the interview raised other questions. Mone rose to prominence through her lingerie company, Ultimo, which harnessed the power of a new age of celebrity culture. In August 2015, Cameron appointed her as his ‘entrepreneurship tsar’ and gave her a peerage later the same month. But questions remain about the success of the company, which documents show …
The Tories are right, we should stop the boats. Just not the ones they’re talking about
Illustration: Bill Bragg/The Guardian” fifu-data-src=”https://i2.wp.com/www.skepticsociety.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/707754f6e838afa0df27baf0473faae5.jpeg?ssl=1″ data-src=”https://i2.wp.com/www.skepticsociety.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/707754f6e838afa0df27baf0473faae5.jpeg?ssl=1″/> Illustration: Bill Bragg/The Guardian Rishi Sunak is in thrall to just two syllables: small boats. Plunging wages, extortionate heating bills, collapsing public services – such trivia does not detain the UK’s first Goldman Sachs prime minister from his Peloton. But small boats crossing the Channel? These he will vow to stop, fulminating in speeches, plastering the words across his lectern as if in a deadly pandemic. To pull it off, he is yet again this week burning through his dwindling political capital, just like those tech venture capitalists he adores. So he’s declaring Rwanda safe for refugees – which, according to our supreme court, is like claiming black is white – while handing Rwanda hundreds of millions of pounds (its president was yesterday promising a refund). Our chief lawmaker promised this week to break international law and to strip asylum seekers of court protection – or, as he termed it, “the legal merry-go-round”. Denying the wronged their rights is how the British establishment created the Post Office scandal – …
See what crawled out from under the Post Office rock – cartoon
After a television drama lifted the lid on the Horizon scandal, who’s next? • You can order your own copy of this cartoon Continue reading… Source link
Michelle Mone’s Husband Lambasts Tory Ministers
Former Tory peer Michelle Mone’s husband claims the couple have been “hung out to dry” by ministers over the personal protective equipment (PPE) procurement row. Doug Barrowman said they are being hounded to “distract attention from government incompetence” over how it handled £13.1 billion worth of PPE contracts. The Scottish entrepreneur led a consortium, PPE Medpro, which agreed contracts worth £202 million with the government following the Covid outbreak nearly four years ago. He told the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg last month that had generated a £60 million profit, which is now held in a family trust. The government is suing PPE Medpro for breach of contract, while the National Crime Agency has also launched an investigation. Baroness Mone, who was made a Conservative peer by David Cameron in 2015, has said the Cabinet Office, NHS and government ministers “all knew” about her links to PPE Medpro, which she repeatedly denied to journalists. She is currently taking a “leave of absence” from the House of Lords and no longer takes the Tory whip. In a lengthy …
Crime agency ‘looking into £3m sent to peer’s bank account’
The National Crime Agency (NCA) is reported to be examining a £3m payment made to Michelle Mone’s bank account, as part of its inquiry into the scandal surrounding PPE contracts. It follows the peer’s admission that she lied by denying links to PPE Medpro – a consortium led by her husband Doug Barrowman that made millions from deals awarded by the Conservative government to supply personal protective equipment during the Covid crisis. The firm is being investigated by the NCA for suspected offences relating to contracts worth over £200m for the provision of large quantities of gowns and face masks. As part of its investigation, the agency is scrutinising a £3m payment made into Baroness Mone’s Coutts bank account, according to The Sunday Times. The newspaper reported that the transaction is of interest because it arrived after £65m in PPE Medpro profits were transferred to trusts and accounts linked to Mr Barrowman. Baroness Mone has publicly claimed that she is only an indirect beneficiary of the profits made by PPE Medpro during the pandemic. The bra tycoon recently told a YouTube …
Weekend podcast: Victoria Mary Clarke remembers her husband Shane McGowan, Marina Hyde on Michelle ‘PPE’ Mone, and the shame of the ‘silent treatment’ | Life and style
Marina Hyde mulls over Lady Mone’s PPE farrago, car crash interview and fight with the PM (ms); Victoria Mary Clarke on the excess, addiction and love that bound her and Shane McGowan together (ms); and Anita Chaudhuri on being shut out by loved ones for 40 years (ms) How to listen to podcasts: everything you need to know Source link