Report reveals how much money UK lost buying PPE over Covid — Analysis

Well being Division report states authorities purchased unusable PPE at inflated costs
The British authorities spent £12.1 billion ($16.3 billion) on private protecting tools (PPE) because the Covid-19 pandemic raged between March 2020 and March 2021. Nonetheless, £8.7 billion of this splurge has since been written off as a loss, resulting from faulty and unsuitable tools, and the federal government shopping for at above-market costs.
The Division of Well being’s surprising loss – equal to five% of its complete annual funds – was revealed in its Annual Report and Accounts, printed on Monday. The report, overlaying the March 2020 to March 2021 monetary 12 months, revealed that the federal government spent a whopping £12.1 billion on PPE throughout this era.
“Most of this stuff had been purchased at pace early within the pandemic, at a time when there was a surge in demand in different international locations and a brief decline in international provide,” the report states. As soon as this “vendor’s market” evened out, the federal government had overpaid for this PPE by £4.7 billion.

Overpaying was not the federal government’s solely blunder. By September, the nation had imported such a glut of PPE that crates and containers had been backed up at ports, leaving the federal government to pay £115 million in port charges. Even now, containers of unused PPE stay actually piled up at storage websites across the nation.
When the tools lastly reached its customers, not all the things was as much as scratch. Some £2.6 billion price of this tools was deemed “not appropriate to be used inside the well being and social care sector,” the division report stated. An additional £670 million price of PPE couldn’t be used resulting from defects, and £750 million price was ordered in extra and can now go unused.
In whole, £8.7 billion of the £12.1 billion spent from taxpayer funds is now thought of a loss. The federal government is predicted to lose one other £1.23 billion on orders fulfilled after March 2021 that would not be cancelled beforehand.
Additional examples of waste laid naked within the report embrace the acquisition of £50.6 million price of faulty medical tools, the scrapping of £663,000 price of laboratory provides when two testing facilities had been closed, and the throwing away of £343,000 price of fruit and greens put aside for varsity youngsters.
The true extent of the losses could also be higher, because the report notes that the federal government has “incomplete information of the PPE… it had bought, what had been used and the situation, situation and high quality of the remaining gadgets.” Whereas the report states that “some progress has been made” in rectifying the difficulty, “important weaknesses and gaps within the Division’s stock information stay.”
A Division of Well being spokesperson advised ITV that “the provision of those important gadgets helped maintain our NHS open at a second of nationwide disaster,” including that the federal government is “in search of to recuperate prices from suppliers wherever attainable.” Nonetheless, opposition events have pointed to the report in criticizing Boris Johnson’s Conservative authorities.
Shadow Well being Secretary Wes Streeting described the waste as “surprising and inexcusable,” whereas Liberal Democrat well being spokeswoman Daisy Cooper stated “with billions being misplaced to fraudsters, and now this, it’s plain to see that this Tory authorities can’t be trusted with our cash,” apparently referring to the fraudulent use of Covid mortgage schemes.
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