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.
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It really isn’t that difficult to pick holes in the official narrative. It makes no sense whatsoever for Russia to blow up their own pipeline and thereby reduce their leverage over Germany. Not saying they might be that stupid, of course they could. But you ask the question “who benefits from this” and it isn’t Russia.
Particularly considering they could just have turned off the tap.
But the official line in the Net Zero lunacy is we must all learn to live with less, and eco-dictatorship is needed because otherwise the people won’t make the right choices bad decide to use less fissile fuels, so they must be forced to do so by reducing supply.
Blowing up gas pipelines is consistent with that. Now which Governments on the planet are the drivers of Net Zero/Green Deal? And what’s that treaty organisation to which they all belong?
I guess the tap theory could be counter-argued if there were any contractual obligations – simply turning the supply off from their end would leave Europe in the cold so could be construed as a breach of contract. But it would appear we’ve achieved that ‘cut-off’ all on our own through sanctions (on Russia & by extension ourselves), leaving a stalemate to then watch terrorists, Western backed or Russian grown to scupper any chance of a deal in future or avoid any breach of contract – by blowing a literal breach (pardon the pun) in the supply.
That’s the only anti / pro-Russian perspective which makes any sense to me but given the complexity of the negotiations I find it difficult to believe Russia would blow up their main bargaining chip and source of steady income if we do all come to our senses and get back to diplomacy. Regardless, I’m pretty sure the US is happy with their new LNG contracts that are filling the void.
“Democracy Dies in Darkness”
Spelling mistake. It should read – DIED!
And Liberty Died in Silence…
Are you the same, shortly abridged, who still can actually comment in the Guardian?. (God, how I hate that toe rag and the sheep who digest it – mainly teachers, Lol) And, even worse I used to read it it. “Fearless Journalism”. Christ wept.
If it were you, I loved your comment on the nasty Mr. Putin they ran today.
I am proud to say that I was banned 2 years ago for Antivax comments.
Please keep going, especially re their pro vax/lockdown articles. Have fun.
I wish I could continue to upset the bastards.
Any tips on how you get back on once they have “disabled” you, anyone?
Another gripe (I am after all nothing but a grumpy old man) is that their readers appear to have absolutely no sense of humour ! Why is this FFS.?
Is it only ‘the russian pipelines blown up by russia’ that they don’t buy? Anything else? Russia shelling the nuclear plant they occupy?
Everyone, including ‘officials’, who wanted to make their own mind about this conflict, have done this already by now. More than enough time to see and to read to understand that there is much more than ‘totally unprovoked’ attack on the peaceful and democratic country (not that every hostile and undemocratic country necessarily has to be invaded).
‘officials’ know, they just toe the line even when they see that their multibillion energy infrastructure goes up in smoke. And covid madness has taught us exactly that.
Didn’t we just have the head of the British Royal Marines make a statement about the marines having feet on the ground in Ukraine. Wouldn’t their special forces branch, the SBS have gone in first. Isn’t blowing up pipelines or covert attacks on marine installations what they train for, specifically?
“No one on the European side of the ocean is thinking this is anything other than Russian sabotage,” a senior European environmental official… ‘
Must be the same environmental official who thinks global warming is a thing.
Russell Brand’s recent take on this is hilarious.
https://rumble.com/v21leo2-this-is-insane.html?mref=6zof&mrefc=5
I’ve still not heard any sensible opposition to the idea the explosions were accidents (hydrate plugs formed during long periods of low to zero flow through the pipes).
In November 2022 the Swedish investigation into the Nordstream attack said…
”The Nord Stream pipelines carrying vital gas from Russia to Europe were blown up in an act of “gross sabotage,” Sweden’s Public Prosecutors Office said that investigators found “traces of explosives” on several “foreign objects” found at the site under the Baltic Sea, which it considers a crime scene.”
I’d say that is more than opposition to your idea.
The USA did it, whether themselves or by proxy…that’s why it was news for about 20 seconds and since then …crickets….
Didn’t our very own Liz Truss send some message to Biden saying, ‘Its done’, or some such other term. Did I imagine that..?
JFTR it wasn’t my idea, but the view of a veteran gas pipeline engineer who worked for decades on huge undersea projects with multinational companies.
The Ukraine war yet another excuse for this Fake Conservative Government to waste billion of our money.
If anyone needs someone to talk to we meet every Sunday.
Stand in the Park Sundays 10.30am to 11.30am
Make friends & keep sane
From 1st January 2023
Elms Field (near Everyman Cinema and play area)
Wokingham RG40 2FE
Biden said himself (likely unscripted) that the US would put a stop to Nordstream if Russia invaded. And I bet we did the dirty work as Liz Truss’ text confirmed.
https://youtu.be/FVbEoZXhCrM