Government waste of PPE adds up to £310 for every family in the UK

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The amount spent on overpriced, unused and now incinerated masks, gowns and gloves adds up to almost as much as the £386 increase in the cost of petrol for an average household

THE amount of public money wasted on PPE during the pandemic was enough to save every UK household more than £310, new figures show.

In February, the government admitted it had spent a staggering £8.7 billion on unused and overpriced PPE.

And this week Labor announced that ministers should spend a further £35million to pay private firms to incinerate or recycle surplus masks, gloves and aprons.

The government has said it is cheaper to recycle PPE than to store it.

The total is £310 for every UK household – almost as much as the £386 increase in petrol costs for the average household.

Labour’s Angela Rayner has criticized the Conservative government for wasting ‘billions of pounds of taxpayers’ money on useless PPE which they are now either burning or giving away for practically nothing’.

She said: “The government might not need to tax working people in the middle of a cost-of-living crisis if they weren’t wasting so much PPE.

“Ministers have a duty to deliver value and results when spending the public’s money, but Boris Johnson has created a culture of nepotism and waste throughout his government.”

A spokesman for the Department of Health and Social Care said: “Our priority during the pandemic has been saving lives and we have supplied over 19.1 billion items of PPE to frontline workers to keep them safe.”

They added: “In the face of an unpredictable and dangerous virus, it was preferable to have too much PPE rather than too little as it was essential to keep our NHS open and to protect as many people as possible.

“Now we are confident that we have enough PPE to cover any future Covid requirements. We are taking decisive action to save up to £93m in taxpayers’ money a year by reducing storage costs for excess stock.”