The consortium behind PPE Medpro has announced its readiness to enter discussions with the company’s administrators to explore a possible settlement with the government, following the High Court’s ruling that the firm must repay £121.9 million for breaching its PPE contract with the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC).
In a statement shared with Business Matters, a spokesperson for the consortium said: “The consortium partners of PPE Medpro are prepared to enter into a dialogue with the administrators of the company to discuss a possible settlement with the government.”
The announcement follows nearly five years of legal proceedings and mounting political pressure, with PPE Medpro having spent £4.3 million defending its position in court — and consistently maintaining that it delivered all 25 million gowns required by the £122 million contract.
Throughout the process, PPE Medpro offered to settle on a no-fault basis, including proposals to either remake the entire 25 million gown order or pay a £23 million cash equivalent. These offers, made repeatedly before, during, and even after the trial, were rejected by the DHSC.
By contrast, a separate £135 million claim the DHSC brought against Primerdesign Ltd was settled quietly for £5 million, on a no-fault basis, just weeks before trial.
Critics now argue that the government’s handling of the Medpro dispute has been inconsistent and politically charged, particularly as the gowns supplied by PPE Medpro — although found not to meet sterility requirements under a technical clause — were never suitable for NHS frontline use due to being single-bagged, a feature the DHSC reportedly failed to specify across all gown contracts at the time.
“This case has become a distraction from the real issue: the government’s inability to manage PPE procurement, usage, or resale,” said one industry observer.
An £85 million missed opportunity?
Significantly, PPE Medpro has long argued that the gowns — while not deployed by the NHS — were viable for use in non-sterile environments, and could have been resold internationally.
An independent expert valuation found the gowns could have been worth £85 million on the global market at the end of 2020. Yet the government made no attempt to resell or repurpose them, despite sitting on a decade’s worth of surplus gown stock and ultimately writing off nearly £10 billion of pandemic PPE.
Had the DHSC chosen to act, the net financial difference between contract cost and resale value would have been just £37 million — a fraction of the claim pursued in court.
On 2 October, Mrs Justice Cockerill ruled that PPE Medpro breached the contract by failing to prove that the gowns had undergone a validated sterilisation process, despite providing all delivery documentation and post-sterilisation test certificates.
The judge noted that the required documentation for radiation dose mapping — which the company later obtained after sending investigators to China — was not provided in time for trial. The failure, she ruled, constituted a technical breach of contract, and PPE Medpro was ordered to repay the full contract value.
Barrowman and Mone have slammed the ruling as a “travesty of justice” and accused the government of scapegoating them to deflect attention from its wider pandemic procurement failures.
PPE Medpro is now in administration, and it remains to be seen whether the consortium’s willingness to re-engage with the government will lead to a negotiated resolution — or further legal wrangling.
But as calls grow for transparency over the government’s own procurement decisions, the PPE Medpro saga is no longer just a legal dispute — it has become a symbol of the political and financial fallout of the UK’s Covid-era spending spree.
Paul Jones
Harvard alumni and former New York Times journalist. Editor of Business Matters for over 15 years, the UKs largest business magazine. I am also head of Capital Business Media’s automotive division working for clients such as Red Bull Racing, Honda, Aston Martin and Infiniti.
