Covid Inquiry: Care Sector Left to Fend for Itself as £10bn PPE Bill Laid Bare
A damning report from the UK Covid-19 Inquiry has revealed that nearly £10 billion of public money was squandered on personal protective equipment during the pandemic, with care homes among the frontline services left to source their own supplies during the worst of the crisis.
Inquiry chair Baroness Hallett found that of the £14.9 billion spent by the UK and devolved governments on PPE, some £9.9 billion – almost two-thirds – ultimately went to waste. Once the cost of testing kits, ventilators and other equipment is factored in, total government spending between January 2020 and June 2022 topped £42 billion.
A Sector Left Exposed
For care providers, the report’s findings will resonate deeply. Baroness Hallett’s team concluded that care homes, alongside GP surgeries and pharmacies, were effectively left to fend for themselves, expected to secure their own masks, gowns and gloves at the height of the emergency. The report brands this a serious planning failure – one that will be painfully familiar to operators who remember scouring for suppliers, paying inflated prices, or going without.
That failure was compounded by the state of the national stockpile itself. England entered the pandemic with reserves in what the inquiry called a precarious condition, and by the end of March 2020, as hospital demand surged, the emergency supply was already running dry. Investigators found that only a third of the masks held in England’s stockpile were fit for use, while Scotland had no high-grade respiratory masks in reserve at all.
The Scale of the Waste
The inquiry’s financial findings paint a picture of a system built in a panic. Across the UK, £9.9 billion of PPE bought during the pandemic was written off as unused or out of date, while a further £157 million was lost on healthcare equipment that was never deployed. A separate scheme to fast-track ventilator production, launched when hospitals feared being overwhelmed, cost taxpayers an additional £143 million for designs that never reached patients.
The devolved nations recorded their own losses: Scotland wrote off around £8 million in healthcare equipment, Wales spent £18 million on PPE that went unused, and Northern Ireland faced £43 million of masks, gowns and gloves at risk of expiring before they could be issued.
Baroness Hallett acknowledged that buying too much protective equipment was preferable to buying too little in the midst of a public health emergency, but she stressed that supply should have been far better matched to actual need. Sound planning, she said, would have delivered a procurement system that was fairer, quicker and considerably cheaper – rather than one built on improvisation because contingency plans had never been properly tested.
The VIP Lane Controversy
Much of the political fallout from the inquiry centres on the so-called VIP lane, a fast-track route introduced in April 2020 that gave priority to PPE offers referred by ministers, MPs, peers or senior officials. Ministers at the time defended the scheme as a necessary response to an urgent shortage of protective kit for health and care staff.
The inquiry took a starkly different view, describing the lane as a flawed prioritisation model that built unfairness into the emergency buying process. Some firms benefited from their political connections in ways that damaged public confidence in government at a time when trust mattered most, the report found, and it recommended that no such scheme should ever be revived.
Importantly, Baroness Hallett stated she had found no evidence of cronyism or corruption on the part of ministers or civil servants in the final awarding of contracts.
What the Inquiry Wants to See Change
Looking ahead, the inquiry has called for a fundamental overhaul of how emergency PPE is bought and distributed in any future pandemic, alongside a national industry strategy that treats essential healthcare equipment as a strategic asset rather than an afterthought. It has also urged improvements to the physical stockpile itself, currently held in a warehouse on Merseyside.
A spokeswoman for the Prime Minister said the findings made for difficult reading and confirmed the Government was committed to learning the lessons of the pandemic to ensure the country is better prepared in future. Ministers, she said, would consider the inquiry’s recommendations carefully and respond in due course.
The Taxpayers Alliance commented: “Taxpayers will be sickened to learn that the government has wasted £10bn on PPE while failing to protect healthcare staff.
“This is the inevitable result of a bloated public sector that refuses to stress-test its own plans, only to then panic and raid the pockets of hard-working Brits.
“There must be a radical overhaul of emergency procurement systems, and ministers must claw back cash wherever possible.”
