It’s a lovely yacht. I wouldn’t mind going for a sail in it
I thought it looked quite swish when they bought it last year - I see they’ve done a lot of re-fitting since then and nearly doubled the asking price sale tag since they bought it!
I wonder how much they spent on the refurbishment and why they are selling it so soon after that big re-furb.
I see the yacht is not directly “owned” by Mone or her husband, Barrowman, but the registered owner is a company called LM Yachts, which lists Anthony Page as the Director - hmmm …. that chap’s name keeps cropping up, doesn’t it?!
Anthony Page, the sole owner of PPE Medpro, is a wealth management expert who works for Barrowman’s Knox House Trust, part of the Knox Group of companies based on the Isle of Man, where Lady Mone and her husband live on a £25 million estate.
In December The Mail on Sunday revealed Mr Page is the director of a firm that owns a luxury yacht, called Lady M, on which Lady Mone sailed around the Adriatic last summer.
Mr Page is also the majority shareholder of Lady Mone’s new business venture Neo Space, which operates spaces for rent in Aberdeen.
Unpick this bit of paranoia. There are clearly some very poor MPs and even some corrupt ones - but there are also MPs who genuinely aim to improve the lives of people in the UK. The house of lords does not to be re-thought. There are too many, too many appointed for the wrong reasons and insufficient oversight of the efforts those in the lords make. But we do need an upper chamber to provide checks and balances against the most dubious actions by the government of the day.
As for the judiciary, they play a critical role in ensuring that parliament adheres to the laws and standards of the country. This is particularly needed in the UK as we do not have a single, documented constitution to guide the government.
So, sorry, but I disagree with your statement.
The HSBC probe found that £65mn in profits from PPE Medpro were transferred to The Warren Trust, whose beneficial owner was Barrowman and registered in the Isle of Man, £45.8mn of which was then transferred to Barrowman’s personal account.
A sum of £28.8mn was then transferred to The Keristal Trust, whose beneficiaries were Michelle Mone and her children, the documents show.
Barrowman said the transfers were made for “tax efficiency reasons” and that he sent money to Mone and her children in “his personal capacity”, the document said.
More than £700,000 was also transferred to the account of Mone’s eldest daughter Rebecca, as well as £3mn to another account Mone held with the private bank Coutts, the report states.
It is not clear from the documents why Barrowman — who has repeatedly distanced himself from PPE Medpro — received or disbursed profits from the company.
PPE Medpro has one director, Anthony Page, who until recently was also a director of the Knox House Trust, part of the Knox group, founded by Barrowman. Page had been the registered secretary for MGM Media — a company that managed Mone’s personal brand — until he quit the role on the day PPE Medpro was set up.
Barrowman transferred £201,500 from his personal account to the personal account of Page, which Page stated was a gift, according to the report. Page subsequently made a number of transfers from his account to other Knox House employees, all designated as gifts.
It is such a pity, at least the NSW one does have teeth and has led to the downfall of two Premiers and the complete purging of Wollongong Council and senior staff for example. How effective the new Federal one will be remains to be seen.
They do need to be independent, have funding and effective teeth.
What the government has not denied is that a Conservative `politician’ apparently benefited personally and financially from her connection to a business that was awarded substantial government contracts as a result of her lobbying by a backdoor route not available to others.
Worse still, shameless ministers appear to have learned nothing from these scandals. The government’s new procurement bill gives them free rein to hand out billions of pounds of taxpayers’ cash once more. Far from showing that they will take steps to prevent a repeat of this scandal, they’ve brazenly admitted that if a new pandemic were unleashed upon us tomorrow, they would do it all again. But we can no longer afford another of these scandals – or waste on this epic scale.
A petition started by campaign group 38 Degrees and addressed to the House of Lords conduct committee is calling for Baroness Mone to be expelled. It also demands that the body “ensure that every penny in profit that she took from the taxpayer is repaid immediately”.
Jonathan Harty, Campaigns Manager at 38 Degrees, said: “It’s less than a week since the light on the paper trail reportedly linking Baroness Mone to this scandal was revealed, and already more than 124,000 members of the public have called for her to be expelled from the Lords. While our heroic NHS workers were putting their lives on the line during the pandemic, the idea a Conservative peer could be feathering her own nest on the backs of a contract that failed to deliver the vital PPE our essential workers needed, is sickening. In the face of reports that millions may have been pocketed by people looking to make a profit out of the pandemic, the message from the public couldn’t be clearer: corruption has no place in politics. If Baroness Mone used her position to make millions of pounds for herself, she should not only lose her seat in the Lords, she should have to pay back every penny. Michelle Mone still sits as a Conservative Peer. The pressure on the Lords Committee, and on Government ministers is mounting by the minute.”
The Labour party is bringing a binding vote to the Commons on Tuesday to attempt to make the government release “all papers, advice, and correspondence involving ministers and special advisers, including submissions and electronic communications” relating to the contracts to the public accounts committee.
Speaking ahead of the vote, deputy leader Angela Rayner said: “Tory MPs can either back Labour’s binding vote to force ministers to come clean on the murky award of £203m in taxpayers’ money to a shady company linked to a Tory peer, or they are choosing to be complicit in a cover-up.”
I’ll put my money on “Tory MPs choosing to be complicit in a cover-up.” …
The party will present a motion calling for the documents to be published in a Commons debate later.
If the motion passes, the government would have to publish the documents, although they may argue they can be redacted for legal reasons or because of commercial sensitivity.
Conservative MPs are expected to abstain from the vote, which would allow the motion to pass.
Tory peer Michelle Mone is taking a leave of absence from the Lords “to clear her name of the allegations that have been unjustly levelled against her”, her spokesman has said.
It means she will not attend sittings of the House, vote on any proceedings or be able to claim any allowance. Her spokesman said the leave of absence was “with immediate effect” and was Baroness Mone’s decision. It also means she does not have to register her financial interests, although her request for a leave of absence could be refused.
Baroness Mone has not voted in the Lords since April and has not spoken in a debate since March 2020.
Obviously, because her attendance record is so poor, she won’t be missed but her avoidance of financial scrutiny will be duly noted …
Dismal isn’t it? She pockets £29m and suddenly finds that ducking out of the HoL is both convenient for avoiding scrutiny and gives her more time to spend on her yacht. No wonder Russian oligarchs looked at London and felt completely at home.
A second company that the Tory peer Michelle Mone lobbied ministers over in an attempt to secure government Covid contracts was a secret entity of her husband’s family office, the Guardian can reveal.
Lady Mone’s lobbying on behalf of the company, LFI Diagnostics, which she tried to help secure government contracts for Covid lateral flow tests, prompted a formal rebuke from a health minister who reminded her of “the need for propriety”.
A departmental source told the Guardian that Mone was “in a class of her own in terms of the sheer aggression of her advocacy” on behalf of LFI Diagnostics.
However, it is the revelation that the company was a secret entity of the office that manages the wealth of her husband, Douglas Barrowman, that will deepen the controversy over the Tory peer and her access to ministers.
Mone’s apparent lobbying during the pandemic of at least four Tory ministers – Matt Hancock, Michael Gove, Lord Agnew and Lord Bethell – is threatening to become a major scandal for the government.
Mone is, seemingly, “one pushy broad”, as the vernacular has it …
The government has agreed to publish documents relating to £200m of personal protective equipment (PPE) contracts given to a company that has been linked to a Conservative peer - but not until probes into the firm have completed.
Labour brought a binding vote to the Commons on Tuesday, demanding “all papers, advice, and correspondence” about contracts given to PPE Medpro to be handed over to the Commons’ Public Accounts Committee (PAC).
The party’s deputy leader Anglea Rayner said it was time to “end the cover-up and begin the clean-up”, adding: “A vote for this motion is a vote in favour of the truth.”
Health minister Will Quince said the government was “committed to releasing information” and the motion passed without a vote.
But he told the Commons it would only be delivered when all investigations into the contracts were concluded, promising Cabinet Office minister Oliver Dowden would contact the chair of the PAC “soon” about “information sharing arrangements”.
- hmmm …. that chap’s name keeps cropping up, doesn’t it?! 
