A minister has revealed that almost five billion items of NHS personal protective equipment worth £2.7 billion will go to waste.
Health minister Edward Argar revealed more than 36.4 billion items were ordered by the Government’s PPE programme since the beginning of the pandemic in March 2020, and he said, of this, about 3.4 billion units were now identified as possible surplus stock. The estimated price for those items was £2.2 billion.
He said, of the 36.4 billion items ordered, 6.96 billion of them weren’t currently provided to frontline services, and of those, 1.2 billion items were not deemed to be fit for use, and that the purchase price for those items was £458 million.
Mr Argar was responding to a question from Liberal Democrats chief whip and MP for North East Fife Wendy Chamberlain concerning PPE wastage.
The Liberal Democrats marked the Government’s use of public funds as extreme negligence on an industrial scale.
A Department of Health and Social Care representative told a newspaper outlet there was a range of measures for surplus PPE, such as selling and recycling, as well as plans to extend shelf life where appropriate.
He said a Department of Health and Social Care spokesperson told the Guardian that they were working tirelessly to deliver PPE to safeguard their health and social care staff on the frontline, with over 17.5 billion PPE items delivered so far.
And he said that where they have surplus stock of PPE, they have a range of measures they can take, including sales, donations, reuse and recycling or recovering costs from the supplier. In addition, they were working on plans to extend shelf life where applicable.
Wendy Chamberlain said that the waste of £2.7 billion was another series of damning failures for the government as it’s burning a hole in the pocket of the taxpayer, and she added that the government has misspent billions of pounds of public funds on vital PPE for frontline staff that’s either inadequate or will never be used and this was carelessness of the highest magnitude.
The government have shaken almost everything out of the public purse with little or no intention to replenish it, except by means of further taxation.
The public has paid and paid and will continue to be expected to pay and repay for decades, including for the fraudsters of the loan scheme, and Rishi Sunak must go!
The Tory party are the ones that will close down Parliament to evade scrutiny, award contracts to friends, family and donors without oversight and also protect liars to save their own seats, and now there will be billions wasted while they take from the most impoverished, most vulnerable and the elderly.
Still, at least the Prime Minister’s cronies got wealthy out of it!
I wonder if there’s any possibility of compensation?
How can they do this to hard-working people who don’t earn what these people do, it’s truly disgusting and why are they allowed to get away with it? And the government aren’t going to hold themselves accountable for this debacle because their philosophy is, well it’s not their money, so why should they care?
British taxpayers should get their money back because if it’s not fit for purpose, why should they pay for it? But it’s hey diddle diddle some MPs are still on the fiddle, with our money!
Instead of binning them, why don’t they just ship out what they can use to charities and hospices et cetera?
THE MONTHLY MOSQUITO 