Quite apart from all those billions on VIP lane ‘donation’ to Tory donors – like Lady Mone.
The Department of Health has wasted a total of £15bn on unused personal protective equipment, Covid tests and vaccines, prompting heavy criticism from the Whitehall spending watchdog.
The department spent £8.9bn during 2020/21 and another £6bn last year on such supplies, including masks and gowns for NHS staff that have proved unuseable and are now being burned.
Those supplies included £1.5bn of PPE, £5.8bn of Covid-detecting lateral flow tests and PCR tests procured by the test-and-trace programme, £2.7bn worth of vaccines to fight the virus and £1.2bn of various drugs that hospitals used to treat patients.
The DHSC’s report also disclosed that it expects to spend £319m storing and disposing of PPE which is no longer needed and is of such poor quality that it is no use to frontline staff anyway.
In March last year it was still spending £24m a month storing the infection-preventing equipment, the NAO said.
Labour seized on the DHSC’s admissions and highlighted that Rishi Sunak was the chancellor of the exchequer during the two years that have caused such concern to the NAO.
Wes Streeting, the shadow health secretary, said the accounts showed that “the Conservatives can never again claim to be the careful stewards of the public finances”.
He added: “While Rishi Sunak had control of the purse strings, a staggering £15bn of public money was wasted on useless PPE – enough to fund the police force for an entire year. Instead, that money is now literally going up in smoke. Taxpayers will rightly judge the carelessness with which the Conservatives treat their money to be an absolute scandal.”
DHSC estimates that the value of PPE and other items bought in response to the pandemic has fallen by £6bn, and that it has spent £319m on storage and disposal.
Department of Health wasted £15bn on unused Covid supplies, watchdog finds | NHS | The Guardian
This blog supports are the underpaid strikers!! Working people deserve better!!