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MPs’ fury over billions wasted on faulty PPE

By Policy Editor

MPs yesterday blasted ministers for reckless Covid spending that will leave taxpayers with a huge bill for decades to come.

In two damning reports, a cross-party committee said botched purchasing by the Department of Health and Social Care had led to the farce of tons of personal protective equipment still being packed away in unopened boxes.

And billions of pieces of PPe ordered months ago had still to arrive in the UK.

Dame Meg Hillier, chairman of the public accounts committee, said: ‘With eye-watering sums of money spent on Covid measures so far, the Government needs to be clear, now, how this will be managed going forward, and over what period of time.’

In the reports, the committee said the taxpayer would be exposed to ‘significant financial risks for decades to come’, with the estimated cost of the Government’s measures having already hit £372billion in May. The committee said government debt now stands at more than £2.2trillion, or about 99.7 per cent of national income – a rate not seen since the early 1960s. In June alone, debt interest cost £8.7billion.

In one example of future Covid costs, the MPs said taxpayers could be liable for an estimated £26billion of bad loans, out of a total £92billion of loans guaranteed by the Government.

The committee was ‘concerned that despite spending over £10billion on supplies, the PPe stockpile is not fit for purpose’.

The MPs said that out of 32billion items of PPe ordered by the health department, 11billion had been distributed, while 12.6billion are stored in the UK as central stock. But 8.4billion items on order from other countries have still not arrived in the UK.

The stockpile is costing about £6.7million a week to store, the MPs said. It had been determined that 2.1billion PPe items were unusable in medical settings.

The health department said: ‘There are robust processes in place to ensure government spending provides value for money. We have worked tirelessly to source PPe to protect health and care staff, and we have delivered over 12.7billion items to the frontline at record speed.’

CORONAVIRUS CRISIS

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