Baroness Michelle Mone’s interview with Laura Kuenssberg last Sunday has been a talking point on our Letters Pages all week.
Read Alison Rowat's verdict on that encounter here 👈
Today, however, one of our readers raised a fundamental question about the nature of the contract awarded to MedPro, the company concerned.
Alan Fitzpatrick of Dunlop writes:
"One aspect of the £200 million worth of contracts awarded to Medpro for the supply of PPE gowns and masks which I find concerning and which demands further investigation is the £60m profit taken from it one way or another by MedPro, which is linked to Baroness Mone's family. That is a huge, to my mind obscene, profit margin of about 30%, which calls into question firstly whether there was any critical scrutiny before these contracts were awarded to MedPro, and secondly how MedpPro itself could justify such apparent greed when responding, apparently altruistically, to a national emergency.
"The only attempt to justify such a huge profit margin I have heard was a half-baked mumbled mention by Lady Mone's husband Douglas Barrowman, in the recent TV interview, of the 'risk' involved, without clarifying the nature of that risk, if any, as none is immediately obvious.
"If 30% is a standard profit margin known to and considered acceptable by the NHS in contracts awarded for supplying it with its needs, it is little wonder it consumes annually such vast amounts of our tax pounds. Surely it is time for change in the NHS to at least try to achieve some measure of value for money?"
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