According to a damning assessment by MPs, up to £4 billion worth of unsuitable personal protective equipment will be destroyed to produce electricity.
To fight COVID-19, officials spent government money on phony or defective masks and gowns acquired at ‘obscenely inflated’ costs.
According to the Commons Public Accounts Committee, one contract for 3.5 billion gloves was even with a company accused of contemporary slavery.
According to the research, the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) wasted 75% of the £12 billion it spent on PPE in the first year of the pandemic because it overpaid or purchased equipment that did not fulfill requirements.
This includes £4 billion of personal protective equipment (PPE) that will not be used in the NHS and must be disposed of.
The DHSC says it plans to burn considerable volumes to create power, despite concerns about cost-effectiveness and environmental impact, according to the report.
As a result of the department’s “haphazard purchasing strategy,” about a quarter of the PPE contracts issued are now in dispute, according to the report.
‘The narrative of PPE purchase is possibly the most disgraceful aspect of the UK Government response to the epidemic,’ said Dame Meg Hillier, the committee’s Labour head.
‘At the start of the pandemic, due to a lack of basic PPE, health service and social care workers were left to risk their own and their families’ lives.
‘In a desperate drive to catch up, the government squandered vast sums of money, paying exorbitantly inflated rates and payments to middlemen in a frantic hurry that obliterated even the most basic due diligence.’
‘As a result, we now have a large number of public contracts that are being investigated by the National Crime Agency or are in dispute due to claims of modern slavery in the supply chain.’
Furthermore, Dame Meg stated that there are still too few indicators that the department is putting its house in order or knows how to do so.
The DHSC has deducted £8.7 billion from the £12 billion it spent on personal protective equipment in 2020/21.