Failed Covid Contracts
Beyond reckless
On June 2, the UK’s HM Treasury published, to little media attention, a report revealing the multibillion-pound price British taxpayers paid for the reckless handling of Covid contracts.
Failed pandemic PPE contracts cost £1.4 billion: the government revealed the price the British public paid for undelivered agreements, which saw taxpayer cash squandered on unusable PPE.
The pandemic waste was on another scale: we could have discussed the 900 consultants who charged £1,000 daily to deliver the test and trace service; the nearly £1.2 billion spent in two and a half years on stockpiling unused antivirals, or the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee report showing that of the £12bn spent on PPE in 2020-21, £9bn was wasted due to inflated prices or shoddy equipment.were
A Million a day
The Lockdown Files reveal that 900 consultants charged £1,000 daily to deliver the test and trace service.
As no one seems interested in where the billions went, the TTE office looked into the Government’s Contracts Finder, which allows you to search for information about contracts worth over £12,000 with the government and its agencies. There are 4,017 COVID-19 awarded contracts in the database, and we reviewed 1000 contracts above £1 million.
Public Health England (PHE) awarded the largest contract on 22 March 2021, valued at £15 billion, to (tender_241726/952998) for Laboratory Diagnostic Testing Services, which ran for 2 years until 21 March 2023. However, in September 2021, PHE ceased all operations and effectively closed. Did anyone, therefore, have any oversight?
But this is not what worries us; it's several jaw-dropping contracts that go above and beyond, concerning and profiteering.
Here are three for starters.
In July 2021, the Department of Health and Social Care awarded a two-year contract for the Warehousing, Storage, Kitting, & Fulfilment of test kits and associated components. The total value of this contract was £260,229,846, and it was awarded to one supplier: Kuehne + Nagel Limited, whose UK head office was based at 1 Roundwood Avenue, Stockley Park, Uxbridge (now up for rent).
The second contract is a tender awarded by NHS Digital, another failed organisation that ceased to exist on 2 February 2023.
The contract was for £51 million over nine months, commencing on June 20, 2020.
The contract with Deloitte LLP was for the provision of digital solution design, build and live service of a digital platform, ordering portals and mobile applications to support the Covid-19 National Test Service.
If anyone can decipher what that means, they are better than the TTE office.
The contract had an initial period that expired on 31 March 2021, with an option to extend. The services provided under this contract support the digital and data journey for COVID-19 testing. Oh, what a journey it must have been - Deloitte reported record revenues in 2021.
Our third offering is an award for £21.6 million from the Department of Health and Social Care for additional Lab Capacity to the COVID-19 Test and Trace Programme, to EUROFINS BIOMNIS UK LIMITED. The good news is that this was a mini competition - a procurement context refers to a process where a buyer seeks bids from a pre-approved list of suppliers.
So, what did the taxpayer get? The contract started on 23 August 2021 and ended 14 November 2021 - 89 days of storage at £ 21.6 million - roughly £260,000 per day. You could have used the TTE mansions at that price.
By now, you may be choking on your breakfast. These contracts go beyond “failed”. The UK's Chancellor, Rachel Reeves, said: “The country is still paying the price for the reckless handling of Covid contracts which saw taxpayer pounds wasted and criminals profit from the pandemic.” Yes, Rachel. However, you need to go much further in unravelling the fraud and waste that underpinned a vast number of COVID-19 contracts.
We would dearly like to go through each of the 4018. As some of our readers prefer being fleeced by governments rather than pay tuppence a post, we will concentrate our finite resources on nine contracts which struck us as odd. Keep following our work.
Two old geezers who never get government contracts wrote this post.
See also
I agree that the scale of this financial skulduggery is striking, and to me suggests forensic accountants might find similar issues in other parts of the NHS.
But the real scandal is how little all of this appears in our traditional media. It's as if someone has warned them off. In the end, the truth may trickle out but, just like the infected blood, post office and HS2 stories, the main actors will have long gone.
Some in our society, like policemen, members of the armed forces, medical practitioners and social workers, have to account for their mistakes, but others, such as politicians, civil servants and board members of public companies, appear to be immune.
I remember the first Chinese emergency PPE delivery of gowns.
I opened the package with the technician. Instead of having horizontal perforations to tear off each new gown,the line of perforation ran vertically from top to bottom. The result was left and right halves of useless gownage.
We roared with laughter!
Lost in translation.