Baroness Michelle Mone has only spoken five times in the Lords since 2015 - but has claimed more than £33,000

The Conservative peer has averaged 2.5 days attendance in the House of Lords per month since October 2015

Baroness Michelle Mone - who will take a leave of absence from Parliament due to the PPE Medpro scandal - has only made five spoken contributions in the House of Lords since October 2015.

The Conservative peer allegedly made £29million in personal profits from a PPE contract which was purchased through the government’s VIP procurement scheme during the pandemic.

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Baroness Mone has said she will take a leave of absence from the Lords following accusations that she lobbied ministers personally over the contract for PPE Medpro. She has denied any links to PPE Medpro, and her lawyers previously said she is “not connected … in any capacity”.

In a statement, Mone’s office said she will “be taking a leave of absence from the House of Lords in order to clear her name of the allegations that have been unjustly levelled against her”.

Baroness Mone averaged less than three days per month in House of Lords

Mone gave her maiden speech on 7 March 2016, having been sworn in as a member of the House of Lords on 15 October 2015. In it, she quoted lyrics from Whitney Houston’s Greatest Love of All, saying “I believe the children are our future, teach them well and let them lead the way”.

She also said she would “look forward to playing a full and active role in your Lordships’ House”.

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Despite this, Mone has not made any written or spoken contributions to the House of Lords since November 2020. She has not claimed any allowance during that period - Mone last claimed £313 for one day’s attendance in March 2020, on which she gave her most recent spoken contribution.

Mone has averaged just 2.5 days in attendance in the House of Lords between October 2015 and May 2022, the latest available data. In total she has registered attendance 203 times.

During this period, she has made five spoken contributions and submitted 22 written questions. Her last spoken contribution came in March 2020, and her last written contributions came a few months later, in November of the same year, when she submitted four questions.

While there have been a significant number of occasions on which Mone has attended but not claimed the daily allowance she was entitled to, she has claimed a total of £33,134. Other than voting, which Mone has done 280 times according to the House of Lords website, her 27 contributions to the House of Lords have cost the taxpayer £1,227 each.

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Responding to the news that Mone will take a leave of absence Parliament, Angela Rayner MP, Labour’s Deputy Leader and Shadow Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, said ministers should set out a clear timeline for the release of documents relating to the award of government contracts to PPE Medpro.

She said: "The Tories are all out of excuses. Ministers must now set out clear timelines on when, where, and how this information will be released. They can’t keep taking the public for fools by refusing to come clean on what they knew about this dodgy deal.

"Rishi Sunak was too weak to remove the whip, and has left it to Baroness Mone to finally read the writing on the wall.”

A House of Lords spokesman said: “Baroness Mone has indicated she intends to request to take leave of absence from the House of Lords.

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Members request leave of absence by writing to the Clerk of the Parliaments. In doing so, they must confirm when they intend to return to the House. The Clerk will take a decision once he has received the formal request and after consulting with others as required.”

What is Baroness Mone accused of?

According to documents obtained by The Guardian, Baroness Mone and her children secretly received £29million from the profits of a PPE company that was awarded large government contracts after she allegedly recommended it to ministers.

Reports – denied by the peer – have suggested the peer may have profited from PPE Medpro winning public contracts worth more than £200 million to supply equipment after in the early days of the pandemic. The largest part of the order, about 25m surgical gowns, was deemed unfit for purpose. Baroness Mone has not made any record of links to PPE Medpro in the House of Lords register, where peers have to declare conflicts of interest.

The Lords standards watchdog is investigating Baroness Mone over her alleged involvement in procuring contracts for PPE Medpro, although this has been paused “while the matter is under investigation by the police or another agency as part of a criminal investigation”. HSBC reportedly froze the bank accounts of Baroness Mone and her husband Douglas Barrowman and referred them to the National Crime Agency, during an investigation that examined possible corruption in securing government contracts.

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Lady Mone has consistently denied any “role or function” in the company, and. The Government has also come under fire for the use of “VIP lanes”, whereby preferential treatment for public contracts can be given to organisations recommended by MPs and peers.

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