Recommendation 7

The Department continues to review the PPE contracts it entered into to identify suppliers that did not deliver against their contractual terms. By February 2022, the Department had negotiated the cancellation or variation of contracts to reduce the original supply of PPE by 1.21 billion items with an associated reduction in value of £572 million.15 There have been 60 contracts identified by the Department where there was dissatisfaction due to required standards, quality control or due to contractual breach. The value of these contracts is £1.77 billion. In addition, there were twelve contracts held by the Department’s subsidiary Supply Chain Coordination Ltd which were in dispute as at 31 December 2022, where suppliers were under investigation as they were in breach of their obligations.16 The Department confirmed that on resolution of the disputes the appropriate information will be released to the public.17 Stockpiling for a future emergency