The ongoing public inquiry into the national catastrophe reveals endemic waste and corruption. Terina Hine examines the latest report

£10 billion was the sum wasted in pandemic procurement. The fast track VIP lane and useless PPE not only left thousands of frontline workers without protection and resulted in countless needless deaths, but also cost a lot of taxpayers’ money. According to the Covid Inquiry, two-thirds of funding for protective gear was misspent. 

Heather Hallett’s Covid Inquiry this week produced its fifth report, this one into the procurement and distribution of equipment. It revealed that during those early, frantic days of the pandemic the government’s procurement system was in disarray and was opened up to abuse, the extent of which is staggering.

This particularly egregious failing of our state must definitely not be forgotten, and the Hallett report helps remind us of a period that for most feels like a lifetime ago. 

Having entered into the pandemic utterly unprepared, with emergency supplies meant to last for 15 weeks running out by the end of March, hospitals were frantic and the incompetent Johnson government in a state that alternated between panic and denial. Their response was to purchase masks, gloves and gowns that were less than useless and leave care homes, GP surgeries and pharmacies to find their own supplies of PPE. It seems distribution of PPE had not been part of the UK’s pandemic planning.

Wasteful and inept

The report revealed that in addition to the £10 billion of wasted PPE the government also wrote off £157 million of unused medical equipment. But neither of these figures include the astronomical amount spent on Dido Harding’s test and trace debacle. Allocated £37 billion of tax payers’ money, test and trace cost three times more than the vaccine programme and was a total failure. Lord Macpherson called it ‘the most wasteful and inept public spending programme of all time’.

Hallett has also brought to light what she called the ‘inherent bias’ of the VIP lane, introduced supposedly to speed up procurement, but which was in fact a corrupt farce. Hallett’s mild rebuke hides the depth of dishonestly surrounding the awarding of supplier contracts. The VIP track enabled contracts to be based on connections rather than competence. Suppliers recommended by ministers, lords or other high ranking officials, were prioritised, while those with experience and no connections were ignored.

The VIP lane unsurprisingly undermined public trust. Given the nature of the procurement it’s hardly a shock that so much gear was later discarded. What may come as a shock however, is that the Department of Health’s commercial director, Steve Oldfield, was rewarded in the Queen’s 2021 birthday honours list and his deputy and head of procurement received an MBE.

Crooks and charlatans

Baroness Michelle Mone and her husband Doug Barrowman made around £200 million in profit from supplying defective medical gear to the NHS through their company PPE Medpro. Like others they were given the contract to supply medical gear without any competition and had no prior experience or history of providing or producing such equipment. Unlike the other criminals Mone and Barrowman have faced legal challenges. Following a court case the government was awarded £122m plus interest, but the firm went into liquidation in December 2025 and it appears no payment has been forthcoming so far. HMRC is also claiming £39m against Medpro for outstanding taxes, and the National Crime Agency is conducting a separate criminal investigation into the company. As a consequence the Inquiry has been unable to reveal any findings which relate to Medpro.

Rachel Reeves has stated the government will pull out all the stops to recover the lost £10bn. There is no doubt that this should happen, whether it will is another matter. Those responsible for the covid corruption and the PPE disaster should be held to account – and that doesn’t just mean the likes of Michelle Mone and husband, but Boris Johnson, Matt Hancock and the entire cabinet of crooks and charlatans that led the country through the pandemic. The government’s Covid procurement procedures were, as the bereaved families stated and like the government itself, institutionally corrupt. The result: thousands of lives lost needlessly.