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A public spending watchdog has heavily criticised proposals by the Government to burn and recycle billions of pounds worth of Personal Protective Equipment (PPE). Items, including face masks and gowns, were bought at the height of the Covid pandemic. However, Downing Street has now decided to remove large numbers of its supplies.
Why has the Government made its decision?
Around £4bn worth of unused PPE is being dumped, as it did not meet NHS standards, was defective or not needed, according to the Public Accounts Committee.
Two commercial waste partners have been hired by the Government to remove the items, which amounts to 15,000 pallets a month.
They will dispose of the PPE through a combination of recycling and burning to generate power.
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But the committee has warned it’s “unclear” what the costs and environmental impacts of doing so could be.
Its report took aim at the Department of Health and Social Care’s (DHSC) “haphazard purchasing strategy”.
MPs were told that between 2020 and 2021, the DHSC spent £12bn on PPE, but £8.7bn had to be written off.
A total of £4.7bn was condemned because the market price of PPE at the end of the year was lower than the price paid at the height of the pandemic.
She added: “It is a painful reminder of the worst of the pandemic – inadequate or wasteful PPE.
“Sending billions of pounds up in smoke when the NHS and care services are struggling will be hard for them to comprehend.
“If this money had been used more wisely and decent quality PPE bought in the first place, then nurses’ lives might have been saved.
“It will be critical, if we are to truly learn the lessons, for the forthcoming public inquiry to pin down causes and to say clearly where mistakes were made so they are never repeated.”
But a spokesman for the DHSC has said “a number” of the committee’s claims were “misleading”, including that the department is “burning £4bn of unusable PPE”.
They said: “In the face of an unpredictable and dangerous virus, we make no apology for procuring too much PPE rather than too little, and only three percent of the PPE we procured was unusable in any context.”
The DHSC has also insisted it did have a clear strategy for disposing of the items.
It said that it was using “a range of measures to manage excess stock of PPE”, such as donating equipment to charities and transport agencies.
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