Covering fire

During the first eight months of the pandemic, the UK (in the NHS, care homes and elsewhere) used 533,000 isolation suites (coveralls). At the same time the UK Government has procured 29,000,000 more, or 36 year’s supply at the cost of £700,000,000.

For an item that has a shelf life of just three years, maximum.

More than a dozen multi-million pound contracts mostly with unknown or start up companies with little or no experience with medical PPE procurement was handed out without the lgally required tender process and without scrutiny.

In some cases, what was supplied was not within specification and so cannot be used, whilst others have not even been checked for suitability. And yet the Government has not sought to recover the costs.

The same tenderless process and without scrutiny is now being used by different Government departments for Brexit deliverables.

And at the same time, the Government is refusing to spend £20,000,000 on feeding the poorest hungry schoolchildren through the current half term holiday and at Christmas. Such expenditure represents a few days cost of “eat out to help out”, for which most of the poorest could not take advantage of as eating out even with a tenner knocked off was unaffordable.

This is where the Johnson Government is, corruption in open sight. Buying 36 year’s supply of equipment with a 3 year shelf life, paying consultants £7,000 a day to run the failing track and trace system, and yet feeding the poor creates a dependency culture.

Apparently.