April 1

The reckoning

The inquiry, set up by the prime minister into Britain’s response to the coronavirus/Covid - due to start this spring - will be complex and wide ranging. It will look into the country’s response to the pandemic and find lessons for the future.

Of all the probing, one of the most serious aspects for Mr Johnson is PPE - Personal Protective Equipment contracts.

The report from the National Audit Office, published two days ago, is a catalogue of errors, questionable contracts and waste, running into billions of pounds.

The figures are startling, 

The report acknowledges that in the spring of 2020 countries throughout the world were desperately competing with each other to secure vital PPE equipment.

Britain alone made 10,000 contracts, with the Department of Health and Social Care buying 31.5billion items, costing £12.6billion so far, with a further expected 13.1billion.

Of these, 17.3 billion was used ‘on the front line’, one billion is stored in China and 5billion have yet to be delivered.

The sting in the report is about how the contracts were made, including those via the government’s VIP system.

Of the total ordered, over 14billion are in storage, already having cost £737million and still racking up costs of £7million a month.

Of those, the report says, 3.6billion were not fit for use as was 53% of those bought under the VIP system.

Fraud could have contributed between 0.5 to a full 5%, it added

Another indictment; the Department of Health and Care is assessed to have bought 3.9billion more than needed -10% of the  total PPE purchase.

Figures that should be causing Mr Johnson nightmares. One consolation - if the inquiry follows the pattern of previous ones over many years, judgement may not come for years.

 

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