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UK: Government lost £1.4bn on PPE contract with Full Support Healthcare (www.bbc.com)

submitted 2 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

6 comments fedilink hide all child comments

About £1.4bn worth of personal protective equipment (PPE) has been destroyed or written off in what is understood to be the most wasteful government deal of the pandemic.

Figures obtained by the BBC reveal that at least 1.57 billion items of PPE provided by Full Support Healthcare, an NHS supplier based in Northamptonshire, will never be used, despite being manufactured to the proper standard.

The Department for Health and Social Care (DHSC), which was responsible for purchasing and delivering Covid PPE, said it was unable to provide a statement due to the pre-election period.

The Labour Party described the contract as a "staggering waste" while the Liberal Democrats said it was a "colossal misuse of public funds".

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[–] [email protected] 21 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (2 children)

So the government acted quickly, signed a contract for the delivery of PPE that was delivered. Then the pandemic died down and the PPE eventually was not needed.

I understand that these numbers are astronomical, but it does seem like it was done for the right reasons and in the right way.

For a government to get the volume they require, they need a supplier to scale up. A company scales up the way this supplier did requires investments and thus income. Meaning large orders.

And then this stuff has a 3 year shelf life meaning the existing contracts where sufficient for usage and the stock went to waste.

Can you imagine if the government had not made these provisions and the peak of the pandemic lasted 6 or 12 more months. This was an insurance premium.. an expensive one.. but an insurance premium. People don't whine their house did not burn down even though they paid the premium.

My only dissapointment would be if it turns put elsewhere in the world there would have been an actual need for this stuff and instead of eating those costs, incineration was cheaper.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago (2 children)

How does PPE have a shelf life? We’re talking disposable gowns, gloves, masks, etc. correct?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 month ago

I am by no means an expert. I'd guess the active carbon in the filters.

No definitive answer, but it's about the filtering abilities:
https://www.google.com/search?q=why%20do%20ffp%20masks%20have%20a%20shelflife&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&client=firefox-b-m

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago

That was my fist thought. Like couldn't they find a few warehouses or military bases or some place to put it? Even donating would have been better than destroying it.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago

The Department for Health and Social Care (DHSC), which was responsible for purchasing and delivering Covid PPE, said it was unable to provide a statement due to the pre-election period

Cowards.

Hindsight is 20/20 and they couldn't have known how long the pandemic was going to last, but yeesh what a waste.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

April 2020 - wasn't this when bidding on as much PPE as possible was basically the government's only hope?

These were the headlines at the time. Any minister worth their salt would have been on a Turkish runway with a suitcase full of treasury bonds and instructions to buy whatever is available.