Baroness Mone ‘slings mud’ at government in PPE Medpro saga | Harry Yorke

“She’s slinging mud left, right and centre at the government. And they are pushing back.”

Michael Gove is “very, very cross” at the comments made by Baroness Mone in the PPE Medpro saga, says The Sunday Times’s Deputy Political Editor Harry Yorke.

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Had lots and lots of chats with people who were involved in the pp Med Pro contracts and the Michelle Monon Saga and they all tell me that they’re quite categorical that they do not believe she disclosed her financial interest company Michelle moan let’s start there um there’s been all the drama with Michelle

Moan this week you know over she had did her interview last Monday with Laura kbur in which she sort of said that she had lied about her involvement to the Press but actually all ministers and the government knew about it there’s also been some really sort of quite strong

Push back from various government figures Michael Gove Richie sunak both seem to be really sort of wading into this story quite quite aggressively what what what’s government thinking about this story and how it’s going to go are they worried and in what direction are they worried and so on well it’s

Obviously very unwelcome attention for the government because for several years after the the beginning of the pandemic we had a a lot of media stories around the so-called VIP Lane uh which was the the contracts that awarded to people uh and this Lane basically allowed peers conservative MPS and and people in

Government to refer people bidding for covid contracts procurement contracts into a priority Lane and there was lots of controversy around it there were a number of prominent Tory donors peers Etc who were associated with these contracts and it was all very bad for the government and it was it took place

Uh against a backdrop of Boris Johnson and his party facing uh allegations of cronyism and SAS so this is all now back in the news because of Michelle moan and she’s obviously you know the stakes are quite high for Michelle moan she’s obviously under and this company that

She represents PP Med Pro they’re obviously under investigation by the National Crime agency so she has come out fighting yeah and she’s slinging mud left right and Center at the government and they are pushing back Michael Gove actually said in a speech a few days later that he believes a case and hopes

A case can be bought against I thought that was a remarkable thing for him to say yes now obviously I think that’s as far as he said public but my understanding is behind the scenes people like Michael Gove are very very cross at the comments that Michelle moan

Has made um and there is a sense she’s obviously made a lot of very strong allegations she’s trying to fight back in the court of public opinion but there are a lot of allegations that she’s made which she hasn’t yet substantiated with evidence yeah and the times today in its

Report makes that point that they have yet to provide messages from Michael Gove or Jim be the health minister or matt showing that she had disclosed her involvement to them and and I’ve asked for those messages too and they haven’t been forthcoming but in the last few

Days I’ve had lots and lots of chats with people who are involved in the pp Med proo contracts and the Michelle moan Saga and they all tell me that they’re quite categorical that they do not believe she disclosed her financial interest company the flip side there is

That you have people like Lord bethl like Michael Gove like others receiving messages from Michelle moan saying I can help by linking you up with this company and never for a moment beginning to wonder oh maybe she’s got a stake in this never saying to her who’s behind

This company might it be your husband you know I mean just the the absence of never mind the absence of sort of like what uh sort of due diligence yes the absence of a three minute conversation a 3se second conversation just seems kind of remarkable there it’s a very

Legitimate question to ask actually and yeah you and also what’s also remarkable is that if you actually look at the company itself PP medpro this was a company that was set up a few days after Michelle moan actually first started messaging ministers now it had no

History she has lots of links to um industrial production of garments and so forth she’s a very she was a very successful businesswoman but her this company was newly Incorporated and it had no prior experience or track record of delivering the goods it was given contracts for so I think this does raise

Legitimate questions about the the way this VIP Lane operated the the only thing I would say for balance is that when you speak to people in government about these decisions they will point out to you that there were dozens and dozens of peers and MPS who were coming forward with proposals and

Recommendations and a number of those those people they disclosed that they had interests they disclosed them on their financial register of interests again Michelle moan did not do that um and basically they they’re saying you just have to understand the context in which the government Opera there were so

Many coming forward with offers that the government simply didn’t have time potentially to do the due diligence it would normally have done in in kind of so-called peace time so much sort of fear and meltdown generally that they were just TR to get it done yeah know I

I can understand that um let’s talk uh briefly about the economy um we we we learned this week that uh the economy shrank uh for for a second quarter between July and September meaning if it shrinks for if it has shrunk in the quarter we’re about to finish which

We’ll find out uh in the next few weeks I suppose uh then we will have been in in a recession um this is not super news for the government is it no it definitely isn’t and not when we’re coming towards the end of the year when the prime minister’s five pledges that

He made at the beginning of 2023 are going to be under the microscope because he has only hit as far as anyone can see one of his pledges so far which is to half inflation so you had a bit of a Bittersweet moment this week where

Inflation fell to 3.9% which was a lot uh lower than economists had expect Ed so that was you know broadly welcomed and seen as as good news for richy sunak and Jeremy Hunt but then as you say the on has revised its figures on the economy showing

Minimal if and in fact as you say minus 0.1 growth in the second quarter of the year so uh it’s very and it’s it’s not looking as though that picture is going to improve at all for the for the coming months ahead and the ob’s projections on

The economy are quite gloomy and that that’s not good news for a prime minister that’s heading into an election year 20 points behind in the polls people always tend to vote in elections as you and I have discussed before with their wallets and if they think the

Econom is not working they think that public services aren’t performing then they’ll vote accordingly and and it’s not a good situation for them to be in I mean what’s sort of remarkable about it is we all feel like we’ve had a difficult year we all thought the year

Ped was going to be the difficult year and next year is the point where it starts to get better and now you’re starting to think well maybe that was was just sort of Pie in the Sky no absolutely there are some glimmers of Hope on the horizon the fact that

Inflation has falling and will continue to fall in the new year is good news because it means that mortgage rates and the bank of England there’s growing optimism among economists that the bank of England may start to cut the base rate but if but if they’re doing that

Because we’re in recession you know it’s um yeah that’s the Oddity actually of of the economic cycle which is sometimes in order to control inflation uh you have to almost put the economy into recession and the government will never admit to this but the reality is the monetary

Policy of both the bank of England and the fiscal policy of the government has been effectively to reduce economic growth in order to reduce inflation absolutely Absolut so that’s where we are look let’s turn to some more sort of immediate news um excuse me the front page of the times today reports that

Ministers are pushing for facial recognition cameras to be used routinely in town centers after trials in London and in South Wales this is another sort of contentious and and delicate issues especially because it well because there’s meant to be problems with with racial profiling particularly but it’s

Also a slightly remarkable thing for I guess a conservative government to be talking about doing you can imagine this being the sort of thing that a conservative government or a conservative opposition goes to war with the labor government because they want to do it and they call them

Authoritarian and and all the rest of it it’s there I mean David Davis isn’t going to like this no when I was reading this story this morning my first thought is I can see a parliamentary intervention coming from David Davis I I don’t remember why he resigned but

It was something like this wasn’t it yeah well it was brexit but he he’s taken a very principled position on privacy issues in the past and you’re right I mean the from the libertarian wing of the conservative party you’re probably going to hear quite a few people grumbling because it to to many

People this will be seen as quite orwellian it feels you know one one step along the creeping path to a a more State Minority Report Minority Report world yeah world but if you actually look at the details of what what’s going on the this is basically two pilots that have been

Conducted by the Metropolitan Police in London uh and the neighboring areas and also in South Wales around Cardiff and Swansea and the results so far this this technology is quite remarkable uh it they’re quite they’ve been very successful in just a few hours they deployed these cameras on two different

Days in December and I think they I think the Figures were they managed to catch 17 people in just a space of several hours and and you think that will provide benefits for policing because it will free up officers who would otherwise have to spend hours manually trolling through um CCTV

Footage to find people they will be able to be out on the street there’ll be more presence on the streets then it’s also just more effective and easier to catch criminals if you can immediately identify them you can deploy police officers to those areas but as you say

There are also the concerns about racial profiling because this technology um if the accuracy settings or the confidence settings are turned down too low to try and catch a wider net of people it has been shown to actually misidentify certain ethnic minority groups so you have to proceed carefully with this and

Um it will be interesting to see how this um goes you know progresses going forward the the only thing I would point out is that this isn’t something that the government can impose on police forces it’s actually because because they’re operationally independent it will be for them to decide the only way

That the government could really intervene here is if they decided to stop stop it and adopt the kind of measures that the EU has done it’s passed recently an AI act prohibiting the use of this kind of technology in public spaces but it certainly seems like this government is quite Keen to

Proceed with this and if labor gets into government I I’ve never detected that K starma is um on the sort of libertarian side of absolutely look uh briefly Before I Let You Go uh NHS NHS strikes Junior doctor strikes one’s just finished another beginning after the new year one gets a

Sense that the government is just sort of sitting back and waiting waiting for junior doctors to to come to heal rather than being particularly proactive is that fair yeah no it is fair that that is exactly the situation we find ourselves in I I’ve had quite a few

Conversations over the last 48 hours with people in government about this situation and and the reality is this the the junior doctors decided to walk away from the negotiating table when an offer of about a total offer of about 14% uh was on the table for them and the

Government’s position has been that it will not it will not countenance making another offer to the junior doctors until they call off the strike action so that means that we’re just stuck in a a rut here and the clock’s ticking down to the new year we’ve just had three days

Of quite damaging strike action and and we’ve seen figures about what that’s done in terms of people being stuck in ambulances the failure to discharge people and and that’s only going to grow in the New Year these strikes couldn’t really take place at a worst time for

The NHS the 3D of January is normally the day when the winter crisis reaches its its peak um and right now I am not detecting any sense that there’s going to be a breakthrough in the next few days gosh well thank you very much Harry