The High Court has heard that PPE Medpro, a company linked to Tory peer Michelle Mone, should repay £122million for breaching a Government Covid contract for 25 million surgical gowns.

The Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) is taking legal action against PPE Medpro for allegedly violating a deal for the gowns, which were deemed "faulty" due to their lack of sterility.

The company, led by a consortium including Baroness Mone's husband, businessman Doug Barrowman, was granted Government contracts by the previous Conservative administration to provide PPE during the pandemic, following her recommendation to ministers. Both parties have refuted any wrongdoing.

The Government is attempting to recoup the contract costs, as well as the expenses incurred for transportation and storage of the items, totalling an additional £8,648,691. PPE Medpro has firmly denied breaching the contract, with its lawyers arguing that the company has been unjustly singled out.

Paul Stanley KC, representing the DHSC, opened the trial on Wednesday stating: "This case is simply about whether 25 million surgical gowns provided by PPE Medpro were faulty. " He added: "It is, in short, a technical case about detailed legal and industry standards that apply to sterile gowns."

Mr Stanley revealed in written submissions that the "initial contact with Medpro came through Baroness Mone", and subsequent discussions about the contract were held with one of the company's directors, Anthony Page. According to Mr Stanley, Baroness Mone was consistently involved in the negotiations, with the peer highlighting Mr Barrowman's "years of experience in manufacturing, procurement and management of supply chains".

However, he clarified to the court that Baroness Mone's communications were not relevant to this case, which was solely focused on compliance, the Mirror reports. He stated: "The department does not allege anything improper happened, and we are not concerned with any profits made by anybody."

Court documents from May reveal that the DHSC confirmed the gowns were delivered to the UK in 72 batches between August and October 2020, with a staggering £121,999,219.20 paid to PPE Medpro within July and August of the same year. The department rejected the gowns in December 2020 and demanded repayment from the company, but this has yet to occur and the unused gowns remain in storage.

In his written submissions for trial, Mr Stanley asserted that under the terms of the contract, 99.99% of the gowns should have been sterile, equating to one in a million being unusable. The DHSC alleges that the contract also specified PPE Medpro had to sterilise the gowns using a "validated process", attested by CE marking, which indicates a product has met certain medical standards.

He declared "none of those things happened", highlighting the absence of a validated sterilisation process and the distribution of gowns with invalid CE markings. He further revealed that out of 140 gowns tested for sterility, a staggering 103 failed the test.

He stated: "Whatever was done to sterilise the gowns had not achieved its purpose, because more than one in a million of them was contaminated when delivered. On that basis, DHSC was entitled to reject the gowns, or is entitled to damages, which amount to the full price and storage costs."

In his written defence, Charles Samek KC, representing PPE Medpro, argued that the "only plausible reason" for the contamination of the gowns was due to "the transport and storage conditions or events to which the gowns were subject" after delivery to the DHSC.

He contended that the testing occurred several months post-rejection and the samples weren't "representative of the whole population", thus "no proper conclusions may be drawn". He accused the DHSC's claim of being "contrived and opportunistic", framing PPE Medpro as the scapegoat for a series of blunders by the department.

He remarked: "It has perhaps been singled out because of the high profiles of those said to be associated with PPE Medpro, and/or because it is perceived to be a supplier with financial resources behind it.

"In reality, an archetypal case of 'buyer's remorse', where DHSC simply seeks to get out of a bargain it wished it never entered into, left, as it is, with over £8 billion of purchased and unused PPE as a result of an untrammelled and uncontrolled buying spree with taxpayers' money."

He also highlighted the "delicious irony" of Baroness Mone being mentioned in the DHSC's written submissions, despite having "zero relevance to the contractual issues in this case". While neither Baroness Mone nor Mr Barrowman is scheduled to testify in the trial, Mr Barrowman did attend the first day of the hearing on Wednesday.

A spokesperson for PPE Medpro stated that the company "categorically denies breaching its obligations" and intends to "robustly defend" itself against the claim.