UK still rents storage for PPE in China
THE Government is renting storage space in China for up to 1.6 billion items of unused PPE.
The Mirror revealed back in November the eyewatering £1m a day cost of storing PPE in shipping containers in the UK.
But ministers have now admitted that many vital masks, gowns and gloves never left Shanghai.
They also confirmed the Government has rented 9,512 UK containers since the start of the pandemic.
Health Minister Edward Argar refused to name the UK locations as it was “commercially sensitive”.
But he listed the storage sites by county, revealing there were 23 spread over 10 counties in the UK – plus one in Shanghai.
POOR
Figures from published accounts also reveal the Tories are still spending “in the region of £500k per day” on storage – but the PPE is ”not accessible and will deteriorate if kept in poor storage conditions”.
Labour MP Christian Matheson, who obtained the information through parliamentary questions, said: “It’s extraordinary that we’re spending money to rent storage containers in China for PPE that didn’t even make it on to a boat.
“These people couldn’t even run a pound shop.”
But Mr Argar made “no apology”. He said: “The action we took protected thousands of frontline healthcare workers in the NHS and social care.”
It comes after the Government wrote off £8.7billion on lost, overpriced or unusable PPE.