PPE storage costs taxpayers almost £500,000 a day

PPE STORAGE is costing taxpayers almost half a million pounds a day, twice as much as previously thought, analysis suggests.

The Government has revealed that storage of personal protective equipment (PPE) related to Covid-19 is estimated to cost £3.3million per week.

Angela Rayner, the deputy leader of the Labour Party, who requested an estimate of the costs, said this equates to £471,429 being spent every day on storing PPE.

She said struggling families would be “outraged” to learn how much is being “frittered away” on PPE storage costs.

The National Audit Office (NAO) previously estimated that the Government was spending £7million per month storing unwanted PPE, about £233,000 per day.

In an investigation of PPE spending and supplies by the NAO, published in March, it said the Department of Health and Social Care was still to receive 5billion PPE items into the UK.

Labour claimed its analysis shows that government “waste” on PPE over the course of the pandemic would be enough to save each household in the UK more than £310.

The written request from Ms Rayner also revealed that £5.8million of taxpayers’ money had been spent on PPE storage in China at the end of 2021.

The deputy Labour leader said: “While families are struggling to make their pay cheques last the month, they will be justly outraged to learn their hard-earned taxes are being frittered away to meet huge PPE storage costs on the other side of the world.

“The Government flushing the public’s money down the drain with their wasteful cronyism adds insult to injury as they raise taxes on working people in the middle of a cost-of-living crisis.”

Ms Rayner had written to the Government to request that it “publish an estimate of the costs of storage and warehousing for PPE from August 2021 to date”.

In response, Edward Argar, the health minister, said: “The information is not held in the format requested. The department reports on storage costs on a quarterly basis based on invoiced expenditure.

“Between Sep 1 2021 to Nov 30 2021, the latest information available, the total cost for personal protective equipment storage in the United Kingdom was £72.4 million and £5.8 million for storage in China.”

Mr Argar added that the Government estimates current storage costs to be approximately £3.3million a week, saying: “This is a reduction of 82 per cent compared with October 2020.”