Almost £9bn spent on useless or overpriced PPE for care homes and hospitals is written off

The government has written off £8.7bn spend on useless or overpriced face masks, gloves and other personal protective equipment (PPE) which was meant for care homes and the NHS in the first year of the pandemic.

The Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC)'s annual report and accounts 2020-2021 estimates that there has been a loss of £8.7bn (over 70 per cent) of the £12.1bn of PPE purchased that financial year.

The loss in taxpayers’ money included £2.5bn spent on PPE that was unsuitable.

According to department’s annual report and accounts, £4.7bn was written off due to inflated PPE costs, with market prices going down after it was bought.

PPE costing £673m could not be used because of defects and £750m was spent on PPE that would have passed its expiry date by the time it was used. At the start of the pandemic, prices for PPE increased sharply. In its annual report and accounts for 2020-21, the DHSC stated: ‘There were significant logistical challenges around sourcing, procuring and distributing PPE to the health and social care sectors and in this unique situation we had to change our approach to procurement and our appetite to risk.

‘The risks that contracts might not perform and that supplies were priced at a premium needed to be balanced against the risk to the health of frontline workers, the NHS and the public if we failed to get the PPE so desperately needed.

‘Prior to the pandemic, there was no nationally centralised model for procuring and distributing PPE to the health and social care sectors.’

Gareth Davies, the Comptroller and Auditor General of the National Audit Office, who reported on the DHSC's 2020-21 accounts, found a PPE ‘sellers market’ 'with desperate customers competing against each other, pushing up prices, and buying huge volumes of PPE often from suppliers that were new to the PPE market'.

The DHSC's PPE procurement involved large numbers of contracts being awarded to new suppliers, a lack of checks on PPE quality and poor inventory management which Mr Davies concluded ‘contributed to a significant loss of value to the taxpayer and leaving the Department open to the risk of fraud’.

During the first year of the pandemic, staff working in care homes told carehome.co.uk about the challenges they faced as they struggled to access enough PPE to keep residents safe.

After Mr Davies reported on the DHSC’s accounts for 2020/21, Mandy Ryder (@mandyryder) tweeted on 1 February: ‘My daughter purchased her own PPE to protect her care home residents, residents were being discharged covid positive to closed care homes. This was neglect at its worst.’

Responding to the report, a DHSC spokesperson said: “We are seeking to recover costs from suppliers wherever possible.”