PPE failures left NHS staff poorly protected and wasted billions, Covid inquiry finds
The inquiry said procurement failures left healthcare staff underprotected and found 15 of 32 VIP-lane referrals had Conservative Party links.
- Baroness Heather Hallett released her fifth Covid-19 inquiry report Tuesday, finding £9.9bn wasted on pandemic PPE procurement—two-thirds of the £14.9bn total spent—and describing the waste as 'vast.'
- The crisis stemmed from inadequate pre-pandemic preparation; only a third of England's mask stockpile was usable and Scotland had no FFP3 masks, forcing officials to improvise after Prime Minister Boris Johnson and then-health secretary Matt Hancock's April 2020 'call to arms' flooded the system with 25,000 offers.
- Of 32 people who successfully referred VIP lane offers, 15 had Conservative Party connections and none from other parties; contracts routed through it were 'more expensive' with more 'performance issues' than standard procurement, with due diligence sometimes taking four hours.
- Despite finding the system 'inherently biased towards those with connections to the UK government,' Hallett said there was 'no evidence of cronyism or corruption on the part of ministers or officials' in final contract decisions, though the failures 'undermined public trust in the UK government's emergency procurement system.'
- The report withheld findings on PPE Medpro pending an ongoing National Crime Agency investigation into the firm linked to Baroness Michelle Mone and Doug Barrowman, who deny wrongdoing, while Hallett called for a 'radical overhaul' of emergency procurement systems treating healthcare equipment as strategic national assets.
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34 Articles
Michelle Mone Back Under Spotlight as Covid Inquiry Condemns VIP Lane Over £10bn PPE Waste
Michelle Mone has been thrust back into the political spotlight after the Covid inquiry concluded that the Conservative government's 'VIP lane' for pandemic contracts contributed to almost £10 billion of wasted PPE spending, with the fast-track system awarding £203 million of deals to PPE Medpro, a company linked to the Tory peer. Inquiry chair Baroness Heather Hallett found that the high-priority route 'embedded unfairness' in how public money …
Covid cronyism: Inquiry finds Johnson government squandered £10bn in unusable PPE
Boris Johnson’s government wasted £10bn on unusable personal protective equipment (PPE), the Covid inquiry report has found. Inquiry chair Heather Hallett also slammed the then-Conservative government’s use of firms with Tory ‘VIP’ connections to fulfil major PPE contracts. Focusing on the broader impact of Covid, the Guardian reported: The most high-profile scandal of the VIP […] By Joe Glenton
The British government and regional governments spent dozens of millions of pounds on unusable equipment during the Covid pandemic.
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