‘£500K A DAY’ FOR PPE STUCK IN CHINA
AROUND £500,000 of taxpayer cash is being spent on storage space in China every day.
Health Minister Edward Argar admitted the Government had rented 9,512 shipping containers during the pandemic to hold around 1.6 billion pieces of unused PPE that never left Shanghai.
In answer to parliamentary questions, he said the items were being held at 23 sites in 10 counties in the
UK, and one site in Shanghai. An official report out last week said the PPE will deteriorate while kept in the containers.
Labour MP Christian Matheson, who posed the 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.”
Last week, the Department of
Health and Social Care’s annual report showed it wrote off £8.7billion on lost, overpriced or unfit PPE.
But Mr Argar said he made “no apology” for the scramble to secure masks and gowns in the early months of the pandemic.
He told MPS: “The action we took protected thousands of frontline healthcare workers.”
He also insisted 97% of the PPE ordered was deemed “suitable for use” – though that figure will include items passed to schools after they failed NHS standards.
The DHSC report showed a figure “in the region of £500,000 per day” was being spent on storage and that PPE stored in shipping containers was “not accessible and will deteriorate”.
In November it was revealed officials paid contractor Uniserve £124million for “storage costs”.