Much of the kit, comprising masks, gowns and aprons, was faulty or not used before its sell-by date. Ministers spent £14.8billion on securing PPE in the first year of Covid, according to annual Department of Health accounts.īut roughly £8.7billion was written off, in a staggering illustration of No10's waste. It comes after MailOnline last month revealed the Government's stash of wasted PPE includes more than 1billion visors. However, No10 has argued 97 per cent of the PPE it bought was suitable and it is working to recover costs 'wherever possible'. Shadow Health Secretary Wes Streeting added: 'If they hadn't been so wasteful with the public's money, the Government might not need to raise taxes on working people in the middle of a cost-of-living crisis.' Labour today accused the Government of buying 'useless PPE' and giving it away 'for virtually nothing'. Officials argue the move is the best way forward, with PPE storage costs reportedly running at around £7million-a-month. More than 3million goggles, visors, aprons and hand sanitisers are being auctioned off by the Government, which wasted billions of pounds on protective gear that was never used during the pandemic. Ten lots of PPE bought with £600,000 of taxpayers' cash could be sold for as little as £250 in a bid to avoid rocketing storage costs.
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