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PPE failures left NHS staff poorly protected, inquiry finds

newsJul 14, 202626721

The Covid Inquiry found PPE failures left NHS staff and patients at risk and identified almost £9.9bn of PPE as wasted, Baroness Hallett said. The £9.9bn amounted to two thirds of the £14.9bn the UK and devolved governments spent on PPE, and when home testing kits and ventilators are included total government spending from January 2020 to June 2022 exceeded £42bn. The inquiry found the UK entered the pandemic with its stockpile in a "perilous state": only a third of masks in England's pandemic stockpile were usable and Scotland had no supplies of high-grade respiratory masks used in hospitals. Care homes, GP surgeries and pharmacies were expected to source their own PPE, a "major failure in planning," and contingency plans had never been stress tested. The report criticised the April 2020 "VIP lane" high priority process as a "misguided attempt at prioritisation" that embedded unfairness, but said there was "no evidence of cronyism or corruption" in final contract awards. The inquiry recorded additional write-offs and charges: £157m for unused healthcare equipment, £143m for ventilator designs that never entered production, about £8m in Scotland, £18m in Wales and £43m in Northern Ireland at risk of expiry. The report concluded that better planning and closer calibration of supply to demand would have produced fairer, faster and less costly procurement decisions.

Adam Bienkov
@adambienkov.bsky.social

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

4062h ago
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David Higgins12

To be fair, the PPE procurement did achieve one of its key aims: making some total wankers extremely rich.

Cornish Skipper #FBPE #RejoinEU 🇪🇺 〓〓 🔶🌹💚💙11

“Wasted” = redirected public money to Tory chums and donors.

Esheru10

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!

Nolan Principles Matter. End the #GazaGenocide💔💙8

Corruption and cronyism was so blatant that I suspect it played a major part in folks rejecting the Tories in 2024. We could all see what was happening and they just continued lining their mates' pockets! Never forget Never forgive £10billion literally up in smoke FFS!

Nelly Probin8

Six years to conclude the obvious. What a complete waste of time, effort and money. A total let down.

Liz Crosbie #AllianceNowUK #FBPE7

This should lead to prosecutions 👇

Vera Fang6

Johnson, Sunak, Hancock, Gove, Williamson et al should be serving prison sentences for what they did (and failed to do) at the most challenging time the country faced since WW2. Spivs, gangsters, profiteers and charlatans. The lot of them.

Janey Llou (Jane to my friends)5

Angela Rayner should never have apologised. They were, are and always will be scum.

Rav4

Tories know how to sell off everything to make a quick profit and how to enrich their friends. They should be in prison

Icosahedral Misfortune3

The entire COVID Inquiry has uncovered a lot. Now would be the perfect time to start investigations into those responsible, with an aim to see justice served for all the people who no longer have a voice to demand it.

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