Recommendation 13

The Department asserted that while it had deliberately secured a significant stockpile of PPE, it was not clear it had over-ordered as the stock would be needed for the ongoing COVID crisis. It admitted that it did not have full information about how much PPE had been provided by suppliers outside the parallel supply chain. Additional PPE was also used by staff who were not treating known COVID19 NHS patients but were supporting the ‘reopening of the NHS’. It also told us that the PPE it had ordered can be used to support primary care and social care and might also be needed for the programmes to test people for, and vaccinate people against, COVID-19. Not all of the PPE purchased had yet been delivered and the Department told us it would consider whether some of its PPE contracts could be reduced or cancelled. The Department also said that it was looking at sharing or selling some PPE with its partners.19 The Department wrote to us after our evidence session and told us that to date it had, for a multitude of reasons, cancelled or curtailed contracts to the value of around £400 million.20 Problems with the quality of some PPE procured