Michelle Mone hits back at critics in House of Lords
The businesswoman, who will speak on the subject of women and mentoring, claims she is mystified at being targeted.
She told a Sunday newspaper: “Is it because I’m a woman? Is it because I’m Scottish? Because I’m white? A mother of three?
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Hide Ad“Is it because I’ve lost eight and a half stone and I’m now slightly glamorous? It’s horrible to say but when I was eight and a half stone heavier I never got this attention.”
The baroness has just conducted a report for the Depatrment for Work and Pensions into encouraging business start-ups in deprived areas.
Hitting out at her critics, she said: “You can criticise all you want, Mr Labour Nobody, what have you done? Did you get your backside out there for seven months and interview over 100 people? Did you work your arse off? So don’t criticise me.”
In the interview she claims that her involvement in the No camp during the Scottish referendum was the starting point for much of the vitriol.
She said that appearing with the Prime Minister David Cameron had led to “physical threats”.
At the height of the criticism, she said her mum “was crying in the kitchen one day saying, ‘You’re receiving threats, please stop this now.’”
She told her mother to “get up off that kitchen floor. I’m not going to stop, I don’t care.”
The appointment to the Lords was seen as a controversial decision, particularly within the Scottish business sector.
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Hide AdEarlier this year she altered the status of her company MGM Media from a limited company to an unlimited company thus ending the need to file public accounts.
Her former lingerie business Ultimo was sold to a Sri Lanka-based group in 2014 after she and her husband separated with the business racking up losses.
Mone, 44, defended her involvement with the bra company she had set up in Glasgow in 1996.
She said: “Ultimo was extremely successful for 15 years, then I had a really bad divorce. I still sold it and made a lot of money, so I think when they class me as a failure – I’m not the most successful.
“I’m not the biggest – but you can’t say that I’ve not succeeded.”
She added that she had put off her maiden speech in the Lords until the criticism of her appointment had died down.
Her fellow peers had been mostly welcoming, “except a couple, who have not, who maybe don’t think you deserve to be there.”
She has been working on the review for six months, travelling “from Land’s End to John o’ Groats”, going to “deprived areas” and recommending, among other things, easier access to start-up loans and doubling the amount of time for which the government supports new businesses.