Baroness Bra uses position to silence BBC
Since lingerie tycoon Michelle Mone’s muchtrumpeted appointment as a Government business tsar, it’s tempting to think she has begun to regard iain Duncan Smith’s Department for Work and Pensions as her own personal fiefdom.
Two months ago, the recently ennobled Tory peer — nicknamed ‘Baroness Bra’, thanks to her successful Ultimo underwear range — was criticised after tweeting a boastful photo of herself using the department’s chauffeur-driven ministerial car.
now, i learn Mone, right, has also been making full use of iDS’s flock of dedicated press officers to head off what she perceives as negative coverage of her on Twitter.
in the same week that the row blew up over her use of the Government car, it emerges that one of the DWP’s press team had emailed the BBc to complain about one of its reporters, BBc Scotland business editor Douglas Fraser, because of his ‘personal views of the Government’s new independent reviewer into startup businesses, Michelle Mone’.
Fraser, the DWP press office alleged, had written several seemingly disparaging tweets about Mone since her appointment as Government business tsar in the summer. it wanted to inquire if he had breached the Beeb’s rules on impartiality.
After she was elevated to the peerage, Fraser tweeted: ‘Why do people say they’re humbled after being honoured with something that’s a monster ego trip?’ The press office also queried one of Fraser’s blogs in August, which described Mone’s ‘thin skin and insecurity’.
Peter MacRae, BBc Scotland’s acting head of news, rejected the complaint, but the tweets seem to have since been removed.
it raises the question whether Mone — whose fortune is estimated at £20 million — should be using the taxpayer-funded press office to make complaints on her behalf when she has a spokesman of her own.
Mone dismissed previous criticism of her use of the DWP car as ‘unfair’ and said that she was working unpaid for 50 days on the review.
A DWP press spokesman said yesterday: ‘Michelle Mone is doing important work on behalf of the Government and, therefore, it’s entirely appropriate for the Department to defend her work and seek corrections where necessary.’