UK to burn unusable COVID-19 protective gear worth billions

The idea of burning defective facemasks, gowns and other equipment to generate power has not impressed the U. K.’s public spending watchdog committee

The British government plans to burn billions of pounds in unusable personal protective equipment purchased in haste during the coronavirus pandemic, a public spending watchdog said Friday.

The idea of burning the facemasks, gowns and other equipment to generate power has not impressed the watchdog committee. The panel is investigating how the government came to spend £4 billion ($5 billion) on protective gear that has to be dumped because it is defective or does not meet U. K. standards.

Parliament's Public Accounts Committee said the government planned to dispose of 15,000 pallets a month of the gear “via a combination of recycling and burning to generate power”. “The costs and environmental impact of disposing of the excess and unusable PPE is unclear,” the committee noted.

Pat Cullen, chief executive of the Royal College of Nursing, a professional body, accused the government of “sending billions of pounds up in smoke”.

In a report, the accounts committee found that the Department of Health lost 75% of the £12 billion it spent on PPE in the first year of the pandemic to inflated prices and faulty products.

Opposition Labour Party lawmaker Meg Hillier, who chairs the committee, said the PPE saga was “perhaps the most shameful episode in the U. K. government response to the pandemic”. “The government splurged huge amounts of money, paying obscenely inflated prices and payments to middlemen in a chaotic rush, during which they chucked out even the most cursory due diligence,” she said.

Government minister Robin Walker acknowledged Friday that “mistakes were made” early in the pandemic. But he said it was “a totally unprecedented situation” in which countries around the world were scrambling to acquire supplies during a health crisis.