Coronavirus: Health department spent £700m on protective suits which may never be used

Matt Hancock’s Department of Health spent more than £700m on all-covering protective outfits in a few weeks during the first wave of Covid-19, only for all but a tiny fraction to be put into storage, it has emerged.

The department did not dispute estimates that at least 29m coveralls were purchased, of which just 545,000 have so far been used in the NHS and care system over a nine-month period.

Contracts were awarded to a series of companies - including some very small operations with little apparent track record in the field - without a competitive tendering process in April and May on the grounds of “extreme urgency brought about by events unforeseeable”.

Ministers have already come under fire for a succession of deals quietly struck with firms run by Conservative friends for personal protective equipment (PPE) at the height of the pandemic.

The vast bulk of the coveralls are believed to have been added to PPE stockpiles being built up to deal with the ongoing coronavirus pandemic and possible future disease outbreaks.

But protective equipment of this kind becomes unusable after a period, with a typical shelf-life for coveralls of around 10 years and some items lasting no more than three.

The Good Law Project, which compiled a list of the contracts from documentation published online by the government, said that at current rates it was likely that the majority of the outfits would never be used.

The Project’s director, Jolyon Maugham, said: "We’ve shown beyond any reasonable doubt that government has spent hundreds of millions of pounds on PPE that can never be used.

“Even more remarkable is who that money went to – a collection of the weird, the wonderful and the politically connected. So bizarre are these decisions that it is hard to rationalise them as mere incompetence.”

The Good Law Project is pursuing legal action over the award of contracts without competition as ministers scrambled to procure PPE at the outset of the pandemic.

It this week published documents appearing to show that contracts were directed to a “VIP list” of Cabinet Office contacts, with value for money concerns raised only where prices were 25 per cent or more above average.

Mr Maugham has identified 11 contracts totalling around £703m for coveralls. The purchased items are variously described as isolation suits, isolation gowns or disposable protective coveralls, but all have the code numbers 35113410 or BH500, which designate hazmat-style suits reaching to the ankle and wrist and covering the whole head apart from the face.

The largest contract, for almost £240m, went to healthcare equipment suppliers Unispace Global Health.

Others went to smaller operations, such as P14 Medical, a Gloucestershire whose founder and director is a former Conservative councillor, which received a contract worth £156m, pest control and public health equipment firm PestFix (£28m) and marketing agency Kau Media Group (£19.5m). One, Initia Ventures, which received two contracts totalling £49m, filed accounts earlier this year as a dormant company with assets of £100 in the bank.

Details of the number of items bought and the unit price for each garment have been carefully blacked out of the dozens of pages of documentation published by the government.

But one document lists the item price at £24.28 or £16.28, depending on the type of garment, which would put the total number of coveralls between 29m and 43m.

Official records show that the total number of protective coveralls distributed for use in the health and care services in England between 25 February and 25 October was 545,000.

Asked about the Good Law Project’s findings, the DHSC did not dispute any of the group’s figures and said that shelf life of coveralls would vary depending on type and supplier.

A DHSC spokesperson said: “It’s vital we do everything we can to get the necessary PPE to protect our health and social care staff throughout the pandemic.

“With more than 4.4 billion items delivered so far and 32 billion items ordered, this government has secured a continuous supply to keep the frontline safe.

“Our stockpiles have been established to meet the expected growth in demand as Covid-19 cases continue to rise, ensuring staff on the frontline have the PPE they need.”

The companies involved have been contacted for comment by The Independent.

A PestFix spokesman said that more than 90 per cent of its PPE contracts with DHSC - including the isolation suits - have now been completed “on time, on spec and within budget”.

"As a British-registered public health supplies company with a long history of supplying PPE to the public health sector, PestFix has been proud to help the country in its hour of greatest need,” said the spokesman.