Taxpayers will be facing the costs of COVID-19 for decades while an inquiry will not come quickly enough to learn the lessons needed from the pandemic, MPs have said.
Two reports from the Commons Public Accounts Committee (PAC) released on Sunday slammed the Government’s spending on unusable personal protective equipment (PPE) and said a public inquiry expected next year was not soon enough to fix some issues.
The PAC said the taxpayer would be exposed to “significant financial risks for decades to come,” and already the estimated cost of the government measures had reached £372 billion ($511 billion).
The committee also “remains concerned that despite spending over £10 billion ($14 billion) on supplies, the PPE stockpile is not fit for purpose.”
The PAC said that as of May this year, out of 32 billion items of PPE ordered by the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC), some 11 billion had been distributed, while 12.6 billion are stored in the UK as central stock.
Some 8.4 billion on order from other parts of the world have still not arrived in the UK.
But MPs were concerned the stockpile was costing around £6.7 million ($9.2 million) a week to store, with potential waste levels “unacceptably high.”
The report said there were 10,000 shipping containers of PPE still to be unpacked by May this year, but 2.1 billion items of PPE had already been found unsuitable for use in medical settings.
The committee said this cost more than £2 billion ($2.75 billion) of taxpayers’ money and over five times the estimate of PPE unfit for purpose given to MPs by DHSC in January 2021.
For the excess PPE that was suitable for medical use, the MPs were concerned the government is yet to create any robust plans for repurposing and distributing this essential stock in a way that ensures value for money and protects staff and patients.
Nurses changing their PPE on Ward 5, a COVID Red Ward, at the Royal Alexandra Hospital in Paisley, Scotland, on Jan.27, 2021. (Jane Barlow/PA)
Dame Meg Hillier, chairwoman of the Public Accounts Committee, said: “With eye-watering sums of money spent on COVID measures so far, the government needs to be clear, now, how this will be managed going forward, and over what period of time.
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