Personal Protective Equipment: Accounting

Lord Wood of Anfield Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd February 2022 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Wood of Anfield]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what steps are being taken within both the Department of Health and the Treasury to account for the £8.7 billion spent on unusable PPE in the course of the financial years 2020-2021.

[Lord Wood of Anfield (Lab)]

My Lords, I beg leave to ask a Question of which I have given private notice. I remind the House of my interests as a director of the Good Law Project.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health and Social Care (Lord Kamall) (Con)]

Throughout the pandemic, our absolute priority has been saving lives; £8.7 billion of the personal protective equipment inventory has been written down, not written off. This does not mean that it is unusable. The accounts make it clear that only 3% of the items purchased were not fit for any use. The majority of the impairment reflects the fact that the Government bought in a globally inflated market. It was better to do that than risk running out of PPE and risk lives.

[Lord Wood of Anfield (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for that Answer. Global inflation was clearly part of this, but of the extraordinary 72% of PPE spend that has now been written down, £670 million was on defective equipment, £750 million was on PPE that was past its expiry date and £2.6 billion was on unsuitable supplies—if you add it all up, that is enough to build more than a dozen new hospitals. Apparently, Ministers now cannot locate a further £3.6 billion in supplies, and a further £1.2 billion is again being written down on advance orders for this year. Can the Minister pledge today to have a full investigation into PPE procurement processes, particularly into how it became possible for some suppliers, funnelled through the VIP lane, to make so much money from the tax- payer for equipment that was not used or unusable?

[Lord Kamall (Con)]

The noble Lord asks a detailed question, so I hope noble Lords will forgive me if I try to respond in some detail. If you look at the breakdown of the writedown, you will see that, first, about £4.6 billion was attributable to changes in global prices following the point of purchase in a highly inflated market—noble Lords will remember that even toilet rolls went up at one time. As the noble Lord rightly says, the £673 million was for stuff that had failed the quality testing or technical insurance. The £2.6 billion was for stock that will not be used for its intended purposes but can be repurposed. We are also looking at stock in excess of the current forecast requirements, which can be stockpiled, and we are also introducing a tender for testing to see whether the life of some of that stock can be extended.