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Has the Government Learned the Lessons of the £9 Billion Wasted on Covid PPE?

by Dr Carl Heneghan and Dr Tom Jefferson
16 January 2024 3:00 PM

The House of Commons Public Accounts Committee reported that of the £12 billion spent on personal protective equipment (PPE) in 2020-21, £9 billion was wasted due to inflated prices or shoddy equipment.

817 million items costing £673 million were defective; some were counterfeit; some PPE was so bad it couldn’t even be given away. The Government had so much PPE it had to burn £4 billion of unused items; two commercial waste companies were appointed to burn 15,000 pallets monthly.

In March 2022, when the pandemic panic was subsiding and the initial Omicron waves had passed, the Department of Health and Social Care was still dealing with the fallout of its panicked procurement decisions. The National Audit Office reported it still had 176 active contracts “with an estimated £2.7 billion at risk”.

In January 2023, the Financial Times reported nearly £15 billion had been wasted, and the continuing storage costs and disposal of unused PPE stood at £319 million. The Mail reported the cost of storing pandemic PPE in warehouses had soared to £770,000 per day – 13.2 billion items of PPE were still in storage.

Because the Government was concerned it was losing the narrative, it released a Covid PPE media fact sheet stating it continues “to sell, donate, repurpose and recycle excess PPE in the most cost-effective way, as well as seeking to recover costs from suppliers wherever possible to ensure taxpayer value for money”.

In July 2023, the House of Commons Committee of Public Accounts investigated the PPE Medpro awarding of contracts during the pandemic.

PPE Medpro, a private company, was awarded valuable contracts through a High Priority Lane referral by Baroness Michelle Mone. The company was established on May 12th 2020, and was awarded its first contract worth £81 million on June 12th of the same year. The contract was for the supply of 210 million face masks. A second contract worth £122 million was awarded to the company a couple of weeks late, on June 26th, for the supply of sterile surgical gowns.

The Department received tenders from companies with varying track records, some without any history of delivering PPE. Insufficient time and resources were available to reflect on each offer properly, and the High Priority Lane prioritised conflicts of interest.

So, how will the Government ensure good value for money in a pandemic, ensuring it isn’t ripped off, doesn’t burn dodgy and unused PPE and doesn’t spend outrageous amounts of taxpayers’ money?

In a parliamentary Government PPE Contracts debate, Will Quince, the Minister of State for the Department of Health and Social Care, said, “at the beginning of the pandemic, only 1% of PPE used in the U.K. was produced here”.

Years of buying PPE at the lowest price resulted in nearly all of this vital equipment being sourced from overseas, primarily China. The added costs of shipping it, the environmental disaster of burning it, and the profiteering require a long-term commitment to home-manufacturing of PPE.  

Like all good ideas, someone has already thought of it: Gateshead NHS Trust was the first to make its own masks, and 250 jobs were created in Northampton to manufacture high-quality PPE. 

We find it strange that the “UKHSA holds retainer contracts with Berkshire and Surrey Pathology Service and University Hospitals Plymouth laboratories which could support surge testing as required”. This text is from a letter to the Science Technology and Innovation and Health and Social Care Committees chair dated September 29th 2023.

UKHSA, or presumably its predecessor, Public Health England (PHE), made extensive use of surge capacity testing during the COVID-19 pandemic, and it is prepared to invest in the infrastructure for testing but not apparently for PPE manufacturing. Why?

Awarding companies or middlemen with no prior experience lucrative leads to waste, fraud and profiteering. Home-based manufacturers should be incentivised to provide surge capacity times of increased demand. Eliminating the middleman would save billions in times of need while maintaining the supply of high-quality equipment.

Prof. Carl Heneghan is the Oxford Professor of Evidence Based Medicine and Dr. Tom Jefferson is an epidemiologist based in Rome who works with Professor Heneghan on the Cochrane Collaboration. This article was first published on their Substack, Trust The Evidence, which you can subscribe to here.

Tags: CorruptionCOVID-19Face MasksHysteriaPandemicPanicPPE

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16 Comments
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soundofreason
soundofreason
1 year ago

While I agree that we (the country) should maintain a capability to make our own suitable (high quality) PPE, I don’t think this is a function of government to ensure this happens. Government’s job is to fund and appoint suitable people to positions at the top of the NHS. After that it’s over to them – and they should be held to account if they fail.

UKHSA is a branch of government and should have no influence on purchasing of anything within the NHS.

32
-1
robnicholson
robnicholson
1 year ago
Reply to  soundofreason

Agreed – we should be moving towards less involvement of government with the healthcare system. Once again, the NHS let us down. Not that I think that more PPE would have made significant difference to the coronavirus waves.

20
0
JXB
JXB
1 year ago

No.

The Government NEVER learns any lessons, because those running it never go to gaol for their corruption and reckless mis-use of public funds and abuse of powers and the taxpayer ends up paying for their ‘mistakes’.

56
0
transmissionofflame
transmissionofflame
1 year ago

All of the money spent on “covid” was wasted (assuming the objective was “public health” rofl). Furlough, PPE, “vaccines”, advertising, “information”, data-gathering (deliberately not gathering anything useful), testing, “track and trace”, collateral damage to the economy long term, increased healthcare burden from replacing the NHS with the National Covid Service and “vaccine” damage, have I missed anything? Ventilators, useless “anti-covid” drugs. I imagine in the UK alone the total cost has got to be several hundred billion at least.

58
0
rocky44
rocky44
1 year ago
Reply to  transmissionofflame

You missed the 17bn of fraudulent and defaulted ‘bounce back’ loans for which our current PM was responsible. Anyone with a heartbeat (and many without) were able to apply, and since there was zero verification or credit checks the scheme was a disaster waiting to happen. It duly fulfilled its promise.

Last edited 1 year ago by rocky44
5
0
transmissionofflame
transmissionofflame
1 year ago
Reply to  rocky44

Yup good point

1
0
JeremyP99
JeremyP99
1 year ago

Never mind “Test & Trace”. Who stole all that money off us?

31
0
huxleypiggles
huxleypiggles
1 year ago

I do not believe the £9 billion was wasted as such. The sums involved are too great to be brushed aside as panic buying. As with much government spending these last four years the intention, deliberate intention is to impoverish the country. Monies have been diverted in ridiculous deals simply to empty the nation’s coffers so it is not just PPE but money to arms manufacturers (Ukraine – none of our business), further billions on windmill subsidies when we are fuel rich, useless infrastructure projects such as HS2, brain dead DIE projects, grotesque millions spent advertising “You are all going to die” throughout the Scamdemic. God knows how much shipping in young, able-bodied men and accommodating them in 5 star hotels along with the latest mobile phones. None of this was or is necessary so the only conclusion is that it is deliberate. Our government wants to destroy this country and take all wealth from its people. Let us be under no illusions about this and if Kneel is elected he will swiftly turbo charge our destruction.

We must not be led to believe that frankly criminal levels of government spending are purely down to the utter stupidity of utterly stupid MP’s or equivalent government lackeys.

53
-3
Norfolk-Sceptic
Norfolk-Sceptic
1 year ago

This looks like this was set up for the job of guiding the Government in an emergency:
“The Scientific Advisory Group on Emergencies (SAGE) is an expert group activated in an emergency to integrate independent scientific research and analysis from across government, academia and industry.”
https://www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/article/explainer/scientific-advisory-group-emergencies-sage

And the evidence is that there was no clear guidance, nor any preparation for such an event.

In addition, it looks like there is a lack of Scientific, Engineering, Manufacturing, Logistics, Supply Chain Management, Planning, or Business knowledge and understanding within Government. And, in addition to this, there’s has been no joined up thinking within the Civil Service to connect the competent people that surely exist.

It appears that whoever picks the experts need replacing as well.

16
0
Bill Hickling
Bill Hickling
1 year ago

Who is going to take the wrap for this waste of taxpayers money?

8
0
huxleypiggles
huxleypiggles
1 year ago

https://www.globalresearch.ca/i-dont-recall-fauci-unable-answer-key-questions-pandemic-probe/5846409

Fraudci “unable to recall.” He’s been on the same duck and dive courses as Krankie.

13
0
Boomer Bloke
Boomer Bloke
1 year ago

“burn”. Does Greta know?

10
0
RichardTechnik
RichardTechnik
1 year ago

While I know now that none of this was accidental waste I am still shocked at NHS managerial incompetence. Even by the general public sector yardstick. I have posted about this before. Over 3 decades, I built up and ran a private sector high-tech multinational Co; Efficient procurement of fit-for-purpose components and sub contract deliverables was essential. Very occasional mistakes made were usually expensive but were never made twice.
A former employee engineer had married into a Shanghai-nese family and set up a high-tech business there. Having seen harrowing footage of N Italy on TV early March 2020 and hearing the UK NHS was desperately short of higher grade N95/FFP2 N99/FFP3 masks for staff, he contacted me to see if a large consignment of these would be welcome as a family member, a senior official in a Tianjin factory, was able to supply at less than £1 a unit. He wanted no profit, merely to be reimbursed at cost.  I knew he was genuine.  With samples, we worked to reference their 30 Chinese market certification documents to the UK Medical Devices Directives, Regulations and EN Standards. 
I had emailed the NHS procurement director and was eventually directed to 2 clerks sharing a single procurement role post responsible for these products. As is normal practice, I sought from them a Purchase Specification and quantity required. I might have been speaking a different language. Over a tedious 10 day exchange, I was amazed they had no access to technical expertise to define what the NHS needed, no specification and no apparent understanding of the basics of what was offered, let alone the standards to which these products might need to comply. To their obvious relief, we gave up when we learned, the Belgian government had been bought up the factories’ next 4 months production.   I later learned that this Welsh NHS office paid between 7 and 9 times per unit for lower grade masks.
Early on, the documentation exercise revealed to me that all these masks were absolutely ineffective against virus containing aerosols. And the studied dis-interest from NHS procurement, that both the mask procurement and probably the risk from Covid was a scam.  If the Welsh procurement reflects the general NHS (in)competency in basic procurement I am not surprised that between £ 8 and 15 billion (thousand million) pounds has been wasted.   

23
0
huxleypiggles
huxleypiggles
1 year ago
Reply to  RichardTechnik

“And the studied dis-interest from NHS procurement, that both the mask procurement and probably the risk from Covid was a scam.”

The people at the top, the pretend powers that be knew from the start it was all a scam. One of the purposes of the scam was to waste money as I have pointed out in my earlier post.

11
0
Nearhorburian
Nearhorburian
1 year ago

Everything makes sense if you understand that the primary objective is the destruction of our country.

Enriching your mates, and through that yourself with a small delay, is a welcome byproduct.

15
0
JohnnyDollar
JohnnyDollar
1 year ago

YES of course they have: How to Launder More Money with Impunity & create Billionaires.

Oh PS. Let Not Forget The Billions on Nightingale Tents!! That went down well.

0
0

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