Government still paying £1.7m a week to store unusable Covid PPE, ministers admit

Cost of error continues after lifting all Covid-19 restrictions

PPE is being stored in shipping containers (FILE photo) (Getty Images/iStockphoto)

The government is still paying £1.7 million a week to store unusable medical equipment in shipping containers – months after lifting most Covid-19 restrictions.

Figures confirmed by the department of health this week show 5.5 million items of PPE (personal protective equipment) are costing the public purse £249,000 per day.

The continuing cost, which down on last year, show the difficulty the government is having disposing of the equipment.

Ministers last month announced plans to start burning mountains of unusable PPE for fuel in power stations at the rate of 500 lorryloads a month.

The government mistakenly purchased £8.7 billion of unusable equipment during the pandemic, some of it from suppliers with links to the Conservative party.

"As of 14 February 2022, 5.5 billion items of personal protective equipment (PPE) are being held in container storage," Conservative health minister Edward Argar said in a written parliamentary answer on Monday when asked for the cost.

"The Department does not store PPE in containers at ports. Storage costs for containers in that week were £249,000 per day." The minister did not provide more up-to-date figures.

In June 2021 MPs were told the government was spending £6.7 million per week on storing around 12.6 billion items of PPE – which includes masks, gloves and aprons.

In addition to burning items, the government also says it will try to repurpose it for other uses.

But Daisy Cooper, Liberal Democrat health spokesperson, said the situation the government had put itself in was "ludicrous".

“Not only has this Conservative Government put people’s lives at risk by wasting billions of taxpayers money buying useless PPE, they are now also spending several million a month to keep this useless equipment boxed up in storage," she said.

“When the cost of living is skyrocketing, hard working families will rightly feel angry that Conservative incompetence is frittering away even more of their cash whilst they can barely afford to pay their bills.

"This ludicrous situation must stop, before even more money is wasted."

A Department of Health and Social Care spokesperson said there was little data at the start of the pandemic on what PPE was needed, and that it was trying to get rid of excess equipment as fast as possible.

“Our priority throughout the pandemic has been saving lives, and we have delivered over 19.1 billion items of PPE to frontline staff to keep them safe," the spokesperson said.

“Having too much PPE was preferable to having too little in the face of an unpredictable and dangerous virus, given this was essential to keep our NHS open and protect as many people as possible.

“Now we are confident we have sufficient PPE to cover any future Covid demands, we are taking decisive action to save up to £93 million of taxpayers’ money per year by reducing storage costs for excess stock.”