According to the cross-party Public Accounts Committee (PAC), the Department for Health & Social Care (DHSC) lost 75 per cent of the £12bn it spent on PPE in the first year of the pandemic to inflated prices and kit that did not meet requirements.
This included £4bn of PPE that will not be used in the NHS and needs to be disposed of, such as 50 million face masks with ear loops rather than head loops that were not fit for purpose.
There is no clear disposal strategy for this excess, but the Department currently plans to burn significant volumes of it in order to generate power, although there are concerns about the cost-effectiveness and environmental impact of this “strategy”.
In its latest report, the PAC said that as a result of DHSC’s “haphazard purchasing strategy” 24 per cent of the PPE contracts awarded are now in dispute, including contracts for products that were not fit for purpose and one contract for 3.5 billion gloves where there are...