UK missed out on PPE because of wrong email
BRITAIN missed out on the chance to join a EU scheme to buy personal protective equipment because of a defunct email address, Dominic Raab has confirmed.
The Foreign Secretary said a failure by officials in Brussels to update records may have been to blame.
He told MPs that the correct details had been provided but information on the schemes aimed at securing PPE – as well ventilators and lab equipment – was still sent to the outdated addresses.
In a letter to the Commons Foreign Affairs Committee, he said: “The relevant EU committee, the Joint Procurement Agreement Steering Committee (JPASC), was relaunched by the European Commission in September 2019, after three years of not meeting.
“The UK provided up-todate contact details for the UK representatives to the JPASC in September 2019.
“Despite this, however, we understand from the commission that the UK contact details on their circulation list for issues relevant to joint procurements at the time of the Covid-19 outbreak were still those of the previous UK representatives who had last attended JPASC in 2016.”
Mr Raab added: “Unfortunately those email addresses no longer existed” because of changes in departmental structures and government IT systems.
The UK has expressed an interest in taking part in schemes to supply medical products for intensive care patients and a possible scheme on “investigational therapeutics”, Mr Raab said.