PPE failures left NHS staff poorly protected, inquiry finds
Almost £10 billion of the £15 billion that Boris Johnson's Government spent on PPE during the pandemic was wasted, the Covid Inquiry has concluded. The Inquiry found money was wasted on a "vast" scale, with companies with "connections to government" given first preference for contracts
Fraud, on a massive scale. Why is no one in prison?
Johnson, Hancock Gove Harding Mone should all be in jail
How much of it ended up in the pockets of Tory cronies?
When you consider that companies with a track record of providing NHS compliant PPE were passed over as price inflated contracts for defective products were awarded to Tory donors pivoting from their core business to exploit the pandemic, it's even more galling. 😡
Jeremy Hunt dismantled pandemic supplies before covid. Failure before, failure during.
A few people need to be charged with fraud and misconduct in public office. £10bn of taxpayer money wasted and funnelled to cronies. People need to be in prison. If we don’t enforce laws then they’re worthless
Just think of that. £10 billion that could have been spent productively on so many other purposeful things in the NHS.
And at the next opportunity it will happen again, because lessons are never learned. New guidelines are never implemented and there is no accountability by politicians for this colossal amount of waste. What safeguards were put into place to stop rampant greed by banks after the last crisis? None!
And where did this money go, why hasn't it been clawed back, and who has gone to prison?
The money wasn't 'wasted'. The VIP lane wasn't 'misguided'. It was corruption. And this is all a blatant fcking whitewash. #CovidInquiry #VIPLanes #PPEScandal
Odious, truly odious cunts who should in jail.
So when people start banging on about welfare and that there is no money for defence all roads should lead back to Johnson, Gove, Hancock and their cronies. They should be tried and thrown into prison
They're still using minimising language like "VIP lanes". It was corruption on an industrial scale like we've never seen before in the middle of a national crisis. People should be serving long jail sentences for what they did.
Would you believe, today’s big PPE “reveal” isn’t on the front pages of any of Wednesday’s newspapers (other than the Guardian)? news.sky.com/story/saturd...
This should have resulted in criminal charges - or at the very least a bar on ever entering public office again.
If you or I wasted ten billion of taxpayers money, or handed it to cronies and friends, we would quite rightly be in prison. The privileged that did waste ten billion will face no consequences, as is the norm. #Covid #PPE #Conservatives
Gove, Hancock, Johnson et al should never be listened to on anything ever again. “PPE failures left NHS staff poorly protected and wasted £10bn, Covid inquiry finds” www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
the best way to achieve that would be to lock the bastards up
The nearest I came to throwing my shoes at the TV was when Hancock said he’d protected care homes ! No gloves , aprons thinner than plastic carrier bags and a paper face mask to last the weekend
I wish those with long covid, and those families bereaved by this, would sue those responsible Could they?
They should be in prison. But the Old Boys' Network always protects its own.
It's really pissing me off being told what I knew during the pandemic.
They should be in prison - public servants acting in such a way constitutes criminal negligence and malfeasance in public office. I would’ve been locked up for years by now if I’d done what they did Utter filth
But…you know…I would not have minded so much if health staff and care workers actually got effective protection and when they needed it. But they didn’t. And too many paid a terrible price for that. For caring for us inadequately protected. bsky.app/profile/paul...
It's a bit shocking that it's taken 6 years for the PPE corruption scandal to be officially recognised as such when the world suspected it from day 1. Has anything happened to Michelle Mone recently, still in the Lords??
PMQs will be interesting to see how LOTO defends the conduct of the government she was part of.
Our political classes, including Labour now, seem to be almost entirely made up of people on the make (there are exceptions) People wanting to BE rich &/or important Instead of people wanting to DO stuff that improves all our lives
Blood On Their Hands. Filthy lucre, trousered.
Add that £10bn to the tens of billions list due to Hunt's reckless uncosted NI cuts and there's the money that could be funding increases in defence spending that the right is demanding...
I don't need a report. I know because family and friends who were on the front line bore witness to the shambles! One has left the country - a very able young man who may never return.
If there ever IS an interview with these bstards, the opening line is "when are you paying us back you crooked fcuks"
£10bn wasted. A 'VIP lane' for well-connected firms. The Covid inquiry's verdict on the Johnson government is in. They "undermined public trust when the country needed it most". https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026/jul/14/boris-johnson-government-wasted-vast-sums-on-ppe-covid-inquiry-finds
I’m spitting with rage about this. The corruption was on stilts.
It was a terribly difficult period. Mistakes were inevitable. The country was also ill-prepared. BUT the corrupt way in which BOJO, Gove et al oversaw this and how they used the Tory VIP lane was a disaster. So many mates lining their pockets. And they did it despite protests.
How on earth can this enquiry find no evidence of "cronyism or 'corruption? It stinks to high heaven.
That government must have been one of the worst in history for wasted costs
This was entirely obvious if at the time you heard the boss of a firm that had made PPE for over a century and supplied the NHS from the beginning saying he couldn't get replies from the Government about supplying it. Yet MP's cronies' startups were getting orders with no proof they could deliver.
…and what difference does this make to anyone!
The UK squandered £10bn on personal protective equipment during the Covid-19 pandemic, a public inquiry has said, as it hit out at the contentious “VIP lane” for procuring masks and gowns as “unfair” and “inherently biased” www.ft.com/content/2a56...
Not really the UK, but the Tory Government under Johnson and their buddies. The framing matters here in my view.
*the Conservative government of the day: Johnson and his corrupt mates. Don't muddy the waters with "the UK".
So who gets held accountable?
Johnson’s government were such an unserious government for the worst time.
And the tax payer never got any of it back … while Mone, a lot of Tory MPs and their mates got very very rich 🤑 🤬
So who is going to be held to account, how, with what consequences and when??
I dedicated a decent amount of my life a few years ago to investigating dodgy PPE contracts. Here’s what I made of the Covid Inquiry conclusions released today 👇🏻
It was absolutely outrageous, corruption happened in front of our eyes and nothing will happen to those involved. It’s disgraceful 😡
How can you say “…the system was inherently biased towards those with connections to the UK government,” and “…no evidence of corruption on the part of ministers or officials”? It’s nonsensical aside from us knowing it’s bollocks. It totally undermines the inquiry.
Covid inquiry exposes VIP deals, Tory cronyism, and £10bn wasted on unusable PPE under Boris Johnson’s watch, leaving frontline workers facing shortages and death. @jjgjourno writes.
So Borish Johnson spaffed £10 billion up the wall.
Wonder if that 10 billion, used wisely, would have prevented my care worker sisters death from COVID, while working on the frontline? Johnson and his cronies should face the music. Criminal incompetence and fraud.
Time Johnson faced repercussions for his actions and was investigated thoroughly for Russian involvement?
The Covid Enquiry confirms what many of us suspected: we wasted nearly £10bn on PPE during the pandemic. The then Johnson government VIP lane system led to “unfairness”, “inherently biased towards those with connections to the UK government”. www.ft.com/content/2a56...
Meanwhile my wife and colleagues in Community medicine were making PPE out of bin liners 🫤
I'm still waiting for an enquiry into the unbelievable £37 fucking BILLION that was paid for track and trace. I'm a software developer and I can authoritatively state that £37 Million would have been pricy at only a thousandth the cost
Yet absolutely zero progress has been made on the £122m owed to us by PPE Medpro.
If you’ve got a spare £10bn, you may as well elect a joke prime minister for a laugh and waste it on corruption. It’s not as if there’s anything more important to spend it on.
Buit will anyone go to jail? If they don't, this enquiry has also been a waste of money.
The UK wasted nearly £10bn on PPE during the Covid–19 pandemic, public inquiry chaired by Heather Hallett finds. The Johnson government’s “VIP lane” led to “unfairness” and was “inherently biased towards those with connections to the UK government,” she added.
"Of the 36 referrers of successful offers into the VIP lane, 15 had a connection with the Tory party" Wasted = Swindled
Patiently waiting for those responsible to be held accountable. Any minute now, any minute…
Wake me when there's consequences
10bn handed to friends and family of the tory party.
Notable how a government-run VIP lane was obviously corrupt both from first principles and immediate contemporaneous evidence, and yet there will never be any consequences for the politicians that set it up and the Tory-connected millionaires that pilfered the public purse to the tune of £10bn
We literally called out Matt Hancock giving a contract to his pub landlord at the time
And now, back to squeezing every last penny from the disabled and long-term sick. As you were.
'Conservatives'. Always wrecking and stealing.
£10 billion Covid PPE waste was ‘honest error’ says Michael Gove www.channel4.com/news/10-bill...
Steal a loaf of bread and your get sent to court... "Lose" £10billion and you get sent to the Lords...
£10bn an “honest” mistake. Imagine what a dishonest Tory fuck-up would have cost the country?
An honest error? That's almost half of the financial blackhole Labour inherited. Torys...the fiscally responsible party that always seems to leave the country in a mess! And who never miss an opportunity to help enrich already rich friends. Michael Gove, someone I'd rather never hear from again.
Just one honest error Mr Gove? Or just one production line channeling contracts to Tory mates? Many of whom did not even run credible or relevant businesses. The money then just disappeared.
Thanks, Michael, that's reassuring to know. I was convinced that it was down to greed and corruption.
This guy is unbelievable! Corruption in plain sight
Once a slippy tit, always a slippy tit!
How I'd love to see politicians like him in the dock
Me giving too much change when working on a checkout is an "honest error" - £10bn of taxpayers money being wasted is a whole different level you absolute shitlark...
Burnham should go after this money from day one with a monthly update on how we’re getting on with that. “Gorrus back annuver fifteh millyun this mumf are kid. Mad fer it! Appen!” I can’t do the accent.
An honest error? 10 billion quid? Are you pilled up Gove?
@mrjamesob.bsky.social Would a 'dishonest error' be taking a country out of a trading arrangement without a clue as to what practically can replace it 🤔
10 Billion an "honest error"? Oh do fuck off, Pob.