NHS staff put at risk as UK wasted £10bn on PPE in pandemic scramble, Covid inquiry finds

The lives of NHS staff and patients were put at risk during the pandemic because the UK government wasted almost £10bn in a frantic scramble to buy personal protective equipment, the Covid inquiry has found. In a devastating report, chair Baroness Hallett criticised the “vast” waste in procurement – put at £9.9bn, two-thirds of the £14.9bn spent on PPE. The UK entered the pandemic with its stockpile of masks, gowns and gloves in a perilous state and was unprepared for the global race to secure supplies, she added. Only a third of the masks in England’s pandemic stockpile were usable, while 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”, according to the report. The controversial VIP lane, which prioritised PPE offers from those with political connections, was described as a misguided policy that should not be repeated. But Baroness Hallett said there was “no evidence of cronyism or corruption” by ministers or other officials when awarding final contracts. In total, the UK government was forced to write off £9.9bn worth of PPE that was either unused or out of date, along with £157m for unused healthcare equipment. The “ventilator challenge” programme led to another £143m charge for designs that never made it into production. Including home testing kits and other equipment, the total spent between January 2020 and June 2022 exceeded £42bn. While the inquiry acknowledged it was better to have purchased too much than too little, it concluded: “Better planning would have resulted in fairer, faster and less costly procurement decisions.” The report noted that government contingency plans had “never been stress tested” – a failure that left healthcare staff unable to properly protect those in their care.