Wednesday, February 02, 2022
Full cost of Tory incompetence during Covid starts to emerge
If it wasn't bad enough that Boris Johnson's government short-circuited the procurement process for PPE and other covid-related contracts, creating a VIP lane, which was taken advantage of by a number of Tory donors and friends, it seems that much of what was bought is now having to be written off.
The Guardian reports that figures released on Monday reveal that Ministers spent almost £9bn on personal protective equipment, which was either substandard, defective, past its use-by date or dramatically overpriced.
They say that annual accounts show the Department of Health and Social Care paid £12bn while emergency-buying PPE for England in the year to 31 March 2021. Tonnes of items bought for £2.6bn were never usable by the NHS – this figure is now £2.7bn – and a further £670m worth of PPE was not usable at all in any healthcare setting:
This was mostly because it was defective, the annual report stated, and items costing £750m passed their safe date before they could be used.
By far the biggest figure , however, is the £4.7bn amounting to the difference between the dramatically inflated prices the DHSC paid for PPE to fill England’s tiny stockpile, and the value of that equipment now.
The accounts, compiled by the National Audit Office, do not identify to where that extra £4.7bn was paid, whether in increased prices charged by PPE factories, mainly in China, or in significant profits made by UK companies and their intermediaries.
Gareth Davies, the NAO’s comptroller and auditor general, also noted that PPE procurement had been vulnerable to fraud, as normal competitive tender processes were suspended and multimillion-pound contracts awarded to many companies with no previous experience. As much of the equipment supplied remains in sealed containers, Davies said he had been unable to carry out sufficient checks to be satisfied that substantial fraud had not taken place.
“The level of fraud risk has increased as a result of Covid-19-related procurement,” he stated. “A significant increase in new suppliers, a lack of timely checks on the quality of goods received and poor inventory management all contributed to this heightened risk. In these circumstances … I have not been able to obtain assurance that there has not been a material level of losses due to fraud.”
Davies’s cautionary note on possible PPE fraud follows the resignation last week of the former Cabinet Office minister Theodore Agnew, who complained of “arrogance, indolence and ignorance” in the government’s attitude to tackling fraud, after £4.3bn fraudulently claimed in Covid loans was written off.
The DHSC accepted in the annual report that its PPE procurement was susceptible to “heightened risk” of fraud, as “goods subject to detailed technical requirements were purchased from new suppliers … some of whom did not have experience in supplying these types of product”.
This is not the only reason the procurement process is controversial. Last month the high court ruled in favour of a legal challenge by the Good Law Project that the “VIP lane”, which gave high priority to companies with political connections, was unlawful.
In many ways the Prime Minister's law breaking and lies over parties at Number Ten is distracting us from this much bigger scandal. The money wasted on this process could be helping people with their heating bills. There really needs to be proper accountability.
The Guardian reports that figures released on Monday reveal that Ministers spent almost £9bn on personal protective equipment, which was either substandard, defective, past its use-by date or dramatically overpriced.
They say that annual accounts show the Department of Health and Social Care paid £12bn while emergency-buying PPE for England in the year to 31 March 2021. Tonnes of items bought for £2.6bn were never usable by the NHS – this figure is now £2.7bn – and a further £670m worth of PPE was not usable at all in any healthcare setting:
This was mostly because it was defective, the annual report stated, and items costing £750m passed their safe date before they could be used.
By far the biggest figure , however, is the £4.7bn amounting to the difference between the dramatically inflated prices the DHSC paid for PPE to fill England’s tiny stockpile, and the value of that equipment now.
The accounts, compiled by the National Audit Office, do not identify to where that extra £4.7bn was paid, whether in increased prices charged by PPE factories, mainly in China, or in significant profits made by UK companies and their intermediaries.
Gareth Davies, the NAO’s comptroller and auditor general, also noted that PPE procurement had been vulnerable to fraud, as normal competitive tender processes were suspended and multimillion-pound contracts awarded to many companies with no previous experience. As much of the equipment supplied remains in sealed containers, Davies said he had been unable to carry out sufficient checks to be satisfied that substantial fraud had not taken place.
“The level of fraud risk has increased as a result of Covid-19-related procurement,” he stated. “A significant increase in new suppliers, a lack of timely checks on the quality of goods received and poor inventory management all contributed to this heightened risk. In these circumstances … I have not been able to obtain assurance that there has not been a material level of losses due to fraud.”
Davies’s cautionary note on possible PPE fraud follows the resignation last week of the former Cabinet Office minister Theodore Agnew, who complained of “arrogance, indolence and ignorance” in the government’s attitude to tackling fraud, after £4.3bn fraudulently claimed in Covid loans was written off.
The DHSC accepted in the annual report that its PPE procurement was susceptible to “heightened risk” of fraud, as “goods subject to detailed technical requirements were purchased from new suppliers … some of whom did not have experience in supplying these types of product”.
This is not the only reason the procurement process is controversial. Last month the high court ruled in favour of a legal challenge by the Good Law Project that the “VIP lane”, which gave high priority to companies with political connections, was unlawful.
In many ways the Prime Minister's law breaking and lies over parties at Number Ten is distracting us from this much bigger scandal. The money wasted on this process could be helping people with their heating bills. There really needs to be proper accountability.
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When these monies are added together they are not far off the NI tax increases.Are we NHS, NI, taxpayers paying for the fraud and incompetance of The Conservative Govnts actions ?
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