UK
Tory failure to check viability of PPE has cost taxpayer £762million

Basit Mahmood 

2 June, 2025 
Left Foot Forward 

"The Chancellor has been clear that she wants this money - that belongs to the British people, back in our public services."

The failure of the last Tory government to check the viability of faulty PPE, which was left gathering dust in shipping containers and storage facilities has cost the taxpayer £762million.

The findings were made by the Covid counter-fraud commissioner Tom Hayhoe who Chancellor Rachel Reeves had tasked in December with trying to claw back public money lost to fraud and waste during the pandemic.

The Mirror has revealed that after Boris Johnson’s government panicked and ordered mountains of PPE, ‘long delays on checking the surplus surgical gowns, masks and visors meant that warranties had expired by the time the faulty PPE was found’.

The paper adds: “This means that taxpayers’ cash cannot be recovered through the courts and must be written off”.

So much for being the party of sound finances, not only did the last Tory government award PPE contracts to its cronies through the so called ‘VIP lane’, it’s incompetency also cost us hundreds of millions of pounds.

A Treasury source told the Mirror: “The Chancellor has been clear that she wants this money – that belongs to the British people, back in our public services.

“Tom Hayhoe is gripping the carnival of waste that we saw under the Tories and has already uncovered millions of taxpayer pounds wasted on PPE that was left to gather dust.

“Unlike the Tories, Labour won’t let fraudsters who sought to profit off the back of a national emergency line their pockets.”

Basit Mahmood is editor of Left Foot Forward