Smokescreen Part 12

- Selective Surge Capacity - dealing with the problems of waste, fraud and profiteering

The House of Commons Public Accounts Committee reported that of the £12bn spent on personal protective equipment (PPE) in 2020-21, £9bn was wasted due to inflated prices or shoddy equipment.

Eight hundred seventeen million items costing £673m were defective; some were counterfeit; some PPE was so bad it couldn’t even be given away.  The government had so much PPE it had to burn £4 billion of unused items; two commercial waste companies were appointed to burn 15,000 pallets monthly.  

In March 2022, when the pandemic panic was subsiding, and the omicron wave had passed, The Department of Health & Social Care was still dealing with the fallout of its panicked procurement decisions. The National Audit Office reported it still had 176 active contracts “with an estimated £2.7 billion at risk."

In January 2023, the Financial Times reported nearly £15 billion had been wasted, and the continuing storage costs and disposal of unused PPE stood at £319 million.  The Mail reported the cost of storin…