香港政府又又又又發債

Ministers have been accused of throwing away taxpayers’ money “as if it were confetti” after official figures revealed that the government wasted nearly £10bn on defective or unusable personal protective equipment during the Covid crisis.

Annual accounts for the Department of Health and Social Care published on Thursday show that nearly three-quarters of the money it spent on PPE during the pandemic has been written off.

The figures show £9.9bn of the £13.6bn worth of PPE that the department bought between 2020 and 2022 was unusable or its value is now less than the government paid for it. This includes defective or unsuitable equipment as well as PPE that could not be used before its expiry date.

A landmark study has uncovered corruption “red flags” in government Covid contracts worth more than £15bn – representing nearly one in every three pounds awarded by the Conservative administration during the pandemic.

The analysis, billed as the most in-depth look yet at public procurement during the crisis, warns that systemic bias, opaque accounting and uncontrolled pricing resulted in vast waste of public funds on testing and personal protective equipment (PPE).

The review of more than 5,000 contracts across 400 public bodies identifies 135 high-risk contracts with a value of £15.3bn where investigation is merited due to the identification of three or more corruption red flags, which include a lack of competition, delays or failure to release information on procurement, and conflicts of interest in the award of contracts. The report by Transparency International UK finds:

At least 28 contracts, worth £4.1bn, went to those with known political connections to the Conservative party. This amounts to almost a tenth of the money spent on the pandemic response.

Fifty-one contracts, worth £4bn, went through the “VIP lane”, a vehicle through which certain suppliers were given priority, of which 24, worth £1.7bn, were referred by politicians from the Conservative party or their offices.

£1bn was spent on personal protective equipment from 25 VIP-lane suppliers that was later deemed unfit for use. The VIP lane was found to unlawful by a high court judge in a 2022 ruling.