THE government is wasting £7 million every month storing almost four billion unneeded items of personal protective equipment, a damning MPs’ report has found. 

This is equivalent to more than one in 10 of the 37.9 billion items of PPE bought by the government for more than £13bn during the coronavirus pandemic, according to report published today by the public affairs committee. 

MPs said  significant failings by the Department of Health & Social Care in its handling of PPE contracts were to blame for the surplus of items, the majority of which are faulty or out of date. 

The mountains of faulty PPE are being stored across 70 sites in Britain and China, the report said. 

The committee also revealed that unresolved disputes between PPE suppliers and the government could cost the taxpayer £2.7bn. Progress on resolving disputes on 176 contracts was slow, it said, with no cases moving to the litigation stage of the commercial dispute process. 

The committee criticised the health department for taking little action against potentially fraudulent suppliers, despite an estimated 5 per cent of PPE expenditure involving fraud.

As the department failed to carry out sufficient due diligence checks before agreeing some contracts, it was paralysed from acting against suppliers who “may have made excessive profits while providing substandard PPE,” the committee said.

Chairwoman Dame Meg Hillier said: “Even if you accept that some proper procedure will have to slip in times of crisis, the complete collapse of some of the most well-established civil service practices beggars belief.

“The taxpayer will be paying for these decisions for years to come.”

MPs are urging the department to set out how much PPE it intends to sell, donate, recycle and incinerate — and should establish an effective stock management system.