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UK: Unusable COVID PPE worth £4bn will be burned

Christian Fernsby |
The parliamentary watchdog on public spending has accused the Department of Health and Social Care for England of wasting £4bn of taxpayers’ money on unusable personal protective equipment in the first year of the covid-19 pandemic and of planning to burn much of it to “generate power.”

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The House of Commons Public Accounts Committee made the claim in its report on the Department of Health and Social Care’s accounts for 2020-21, the first year of the pandemic.

The report paints a damning picture of the fallout from the government’s rush to compete with the rest of the world to procure PPE, bypassing the usual due diligence in its race to secure supplies. Of £12bn spent on PPE, £4bn was spent on items that failed to meet NHS standards and have remained unused, the report said.

The committee claimed that the department now faces the costs of getting rid of millions of unusable items and has appointed two commercial waste companies to dispose of 15 000 pallets a month through a combination of burning and recycling. The costs and environmental effects are “unclear” the report noted.

The committee said the department lost 75% of the £12bn spent on PPE to inflated prices and kit that did not meet requirements, including the £4bn worth that will not be used in the NHS and will have to be disposed of.


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