Michelle Mone claims she is 'still a Scottish Tory member' despite party denials

dailyrecord.co.uk:

Michelle Mone has claimed she remains a member of the Scottish Conservatives despite a denial from the party.A spokesman for the controversial peer told the Record she still has a standing order and continues to pay membership fees to the Tories in Scotland.They added that Mone had never left that party and had never been told that her membership had been withdrawn.The Scottish Tories told the Record last month that the underwear tycoon from Glasgow had never been a formal member - despite her being made a peer by David Cameron in 2015.The party stood by this on Tuesday, saying that Mone's claim to still be a member was inaccurate.A Scottish Conservative spokesperson said: “Michelle Mone is not a member of the Scottish Conservatives and our records confirm that.”Mone lost the Conservative whip in the House of Lords and took a leave of absence in 2022 over claims she and her children benefited from huge profits from the sale of personal protection equipment (PPE) during the covid pandemic.The confusion over her membership comes after she admitted lying to the public about her involvement in PPE Medpro, which was handed a UK Government contract of £200m to supply equipment in the early days of the pandemic.Mone also admitted that she could benefit from the contract in a car-crash interview with the BBC.She conceded she made an “error” in publicly denying her links to PPE Medpro but insisted that lying to the media is “not a crime”.She admitted she is a beneficiary of her husband Doug Barrowman’s financial trusts, which hold around £60 million of profit from the deal, but said the couple have been made “scapegoats” for the Government’s wider failings over PPE.Mone had repeatedly denied that she had profited from the deal