COVID-19: PPE storage nonetheless prices taxpayers £580,000 a day, new figures reveal

Government spending on storing private protecting tools (PPE) in China elevated by £2.35m within the yr to January – as households battle to make ends meet amid the price of dwelling disaster.

According to knowledge revealed by the Labour Party, the taxpayer paid £23.5m to retailer life-saving protecting tools from February 2021 to January 2022 – however in the identical interval the next yr, that had risen to £25.9m.

Sky News may also reveal that – in keeping with unique knowledge from the TaxPayers’ Alliance – the federal government spent a complete of £312m on storing PPE between January 2022 and January 2023.

In January 2023 alone, the full value of PPE storage amounted to £18m, down from £35m in the identical month of 2022, that means PPE storage remains to be costing the taxpayer £580,000 a day.

And if this value per day was replicated for the remainder of 2023, we may count on PPE storage to value £211m in 2023 alone, down from £294m in 2022.

John O’Connell, chief government of the TaxPayers’ Alliance, stated: “While costs are falling, the COVID hangover is still placing an enormous burden on taxpayers.

“While ministers needed to work shortly throughout unprecedented occasions, households are nonetheless going through an eye-watering invoice for errors made.

“Ministers must get a grip on this spending once and for all.”

Labour’s deputy chief Angela Rayner stated: “The British public will probably be understandably sickened by this eye-watering waste of taxpayers’ cash.

“With families in Britain set to pay yet another council tax hike forced upon them, they’ll be justly outraged to learn yet more of their hard-earned taxes are still being shipped to China every day to meet eye-watering storage costs for useless PPE they’d already stumped up billions for. It’s adding insult to injury.

“A Labour authorities will get robust on waste, with an Office of Value for Money to make sure each penny of taxpayers’ cash is handled with respect.”

According to the social gathering’s evaluation, the quantity the federal government spends on PPE storage in China may very well be used to pay for 512 tanks of petrol a day – or the annual vitality invoice for nearly 18,000 one-bedroom flats within the UK.

PPE storage prices have fallen because the pandemic and the federal government has vowed to cut back the sum it spends on storing the 5.8 billion objects of extra PPE that the UK nonetheless has.

In response, a spokesperson for the Department of Health and Social Care stated: “Since the height of the pandemic, PPE storage costs have reduced significantly, and we continue to prioritise efforts to minimise them. We have already reduced storage costs by 78% since the first three months of 2021.

“We proceed to promote, donate, repurpose and recycle extra PPE in probably the most cost-effective approach, in addition to in search of to recuperate prices from suppliers wherever potential to make sure taxpayer worth for cash.”

As the UK continues to grapple with the price of dwelling disaster and ongoing strikes contribute to financial stagnation, authorities spending proceed to come back below heavy scrutiny because the tax burden stays the best in 50 years.

According to the Office for National Statistics, inflation stays at 10.4% and meals inflation stands at 18.2% – making on a regular basis necessities tougher to afford for a lot of households.