Asked by: Angela Rayner (Labour - Ashton-under-Lyne)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how much his Department spent on (a) costs associated with the resolution of disputed contracts for and (b) other costs arising from the disposal of personal protective equipment between January 2020 and January 2023.
Answered by Will Quince
A team solely dedicated to the resolution of contracts was established in April 2022. Prior to April 2022 work on contract resolution was a proportion of staff time across several different teams, and it is therefore not possible to accurately extract those costs. The Department has assessed the directly attributable costs between April 2022 and March 2023 (using an estimation for March 2023) as £5,367,486. These costs relate to contingent labour, consultancy, and legal fees.
The Department has defined ‘other costs’ of disposal to include the following: costs committed and spent with Lead Waste Partners and others for disposal, and costs of staff time working on disposals. The total during the period January 2020 to end of January 2023 was £18.55 million.
Asked by: Angela Rayner (Labour - Ashton-under-Lyne)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many units of personal protective equipment purchased by the Government are in storage in warehouses in China; and what the cost to the public purse is of that storage on average in January 2023.
Answered by Will Quince
As of 31 January 2023, there were 118,000,000 items of personal protective equipment stored in China. The average cost of storage was £30,000 a day for the month of January 2023.
Asked by: Angela Rayner (Labour - Ashton-under-Lyne)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if he will provide an update on his Department's plans for responding to the Humble Address Motion of 6 December 2022 on Government PPE contracts.
Answered by Will Quince
The Department wrote to the Committee in February to update on progress. The Committee published the letter and we remain on course to provide the information as framed in our letter.
Asked by: Angela Rayner (Labour - Ashton-under-Lyne)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many units of personal protective equipment purchased by the Government are in storage in warehouses in the United Kingdom; and what the cost to the public purse is of that storage on average in January 2023.
Answered by Will Quince
On 30 December 2022, there were 6.6 billion items of personal protective equipment stored in warehouses and supplier storage in the United Kingdom, which in January 2023 would have cost £319,000 a day to store, on average.
Asked by: Angela Rayner (Labour - Ashton-under-Lyne)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, pursuant to the Answer of 30 November 2022 to Question on NHS: Protective Clothing, whether his Department plans to take steps to ship these units of personal protective equipment to the UK.
Answered by Will Quince
There are no current plans to do so.
Asked by: Angela Rayner (Labour - Ashton-under-Lyne)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how much his Department spent on consultants for the personal protective equipment programme, including costs associated with the resolution of disputed contracts, between January 2020 to November 2022.
Answered by Will Quince
The Department has spent £26.5 million on consultancy and legal costs for all aspects of the personal protective equipment programme, including costs associated with the resolution of legal contracts from April 2020 to November 2022. The programme was established in April 2020, therefore the information requested prior to this date is not held.
At the start of quarter one 2022, examination of contracts where there was some degree of dissatisfaction related to 176 contracts of 394 in total that the Department made. We are on course to recover significant funds through this programme of work.
Asked by: Angela Rayner (Labour - Ashton-under-Lyne)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, pursuant to the Answer of 9 November 2022 to Question 78673 on NHS: Protective Clothing, what proportion of the 7.4 billion items of personal protective equipment stored in warehouses in the UK is damaged or unusable; and what the daily cost is of the storage of those 7.4 billion items.
Answered by Will Quince
As of 24 October 2022, there were 7.7 billion items of personal protective equipment (PPE) stored in United Kingdom warehouses, of which 467 million items or 6.1% were not fit for use. The daily cost of storing PPE in UK warehouses is estimated to be £371,000.
Asked by: Angela Rayner (Labour - Ashton-under-Lyne)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what his Department has spent on external legal advice to support the personal protective equipment programme since 6 June 2022.
Answered by Will Quince
From June 2022 until the end of November 2022, the Department has spent £1,011,431 on external legal advice for matters relating to personal protective equipment (PPE). This includes contract dispute resolution, judicial reviews and PPE legal advice.
At the start of quarter one 2022, examination of contracts where there was some degree of dissatisfaction related to 176 contracts of 394 in total that the Department made. We are on course to recover significant funds through this programme of work.
Asked by: Angela Rayner (Labour - Ashton-under-Lyne)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether his Department has made an estimate of the (a) daily, (b) weekly and (c) monthly costs of storing PPE in (i) warehouses and (ii) storage units.
Answered by Will Quince
Between April and October 2022, the total average monthly cost of storing personal protective equipment was £22.4 million. The average monthly cost for storage in China was £2.6 million, for United Kingdom (UK) warehousing was £11.3 million, for other storage in the UK it was £8.5 million. Other storage is comprised of storage in containers and supplier storage which can be in containers or warehouses.
Asked by: Angela Rayner (Labour - Ashton-under-Lyne)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many (a) Government officials and (b) officials in his Department are currently employed to oversee the storage of personal protective equipment.
Answered by Will Quince
The information is not held in the format requested. Officials working on personal protective equipment (PPE) are engaged in a range of roles such as policy development, analysis, finance and reporting. This also includes oversight of the storage of PPE.