APPENDIX 8

Issues over supply of personal protective equipment

 

A pest control supply firm, an office furniture maker, an employment agency and currency traders were among the companies which received contracts to supply PPE. Details of 83 contracts awarded by the Department of Health and Social Care from early March to the beginning of July, worth a total £1.5 billion, were published, but officials said that the total spend would be more than three times higher, at £5.5 billion, with 600 contracts awarded to 200 companies in the period.

It was said that the extreme urgency combined with immense demand forced officials to bypass normal procurement rules and award contracts without going to tender.

While some contracts were given to established UK manufacturers like Polystar Plastics, a Southampton-based company with significant assets which received an order worth £25 million, larger orders were placed with companies that had little or no experience in providing medical PPE.

One contract, worth £108 million, was awarded to PestFix, the trading name of Crisp Websites Ltd of Littlehampton in West Sussex, a firm with assets of just over £18,000, to supply respiratory masks. After details of this contract were made public in July, an amended contract was published which showed the final deal was for a mere £32.4 million for the supply of two million isolation suits. Pestfix made no public comment on the contract but a spokesman did say that PestFix was a public health supply SME that had been procuring and supplying PPE for more than a decade, to a range of sectors, including many NHS Foundation Trusts. “We are proud to say we have already delivered tens of millions of items of medical-grade PPE to the NHS as part of this contract and are close to completing the order, well on schedule.”

The biggest contract was one for £252 million which was awarded to Ayanda Capital Ltd which, according to its website, specialises in “currency trading, offshore property, private equity and trade financing”. Almost everything about this contract for face masks had an air of dodginess: for example, the company is based in a tax haven, the price it was charging was well above the going rate and it has close links to the Conservative party. It was reported that a number of the products it supplied were not up to the required standard and could not be used. The company put up a robust defence of its actions – stating that it had supplied products to the specification it had been given by the department – but it emerged in a legal document that the deal had been arranged by Andrew Mills, an adviser to the Board of Trade in the Department for International Trade, on behalf of Tim Horlick, CEO of Ayanda Capital.

Among other contracts awarded:

• Aventis Solutions, an employment agency based in Wilmslow, won an £18.5 million contract to supply face masks.

• Bollé Brands (UK) Ltd, which produces sunglasses, won a £26 million contract to supply face visors.

• Luxe Lifestyle Ltd, which specialises in such items as novelty gift socks and facial hair removal kits, received a £25 million contract to provide 1.2 million gowns and 10 million masks.

• Monarch Acoustics Ltd, of Nottingham, which makes office furniture, was awarded a £28.8 million contract to supply surgical sterile gowns.

• Toffeln Ltd, a footwear wholesaler based in Bristol, won a £2.7 million contract to supply visors.

• P14 Medical Ltd, of Liverpool, which deals in vascular equipment, was awarded a contract worth £116 million to supply 100 million faceshields.

• Urathon Europe Ltd, a wheelchair and mobility firm based in Chippenham, Wiltshire, was awarded a £52.5 million contract to supply face masks.

• Uniserve, an Essex company which describes itself as the UK’s largest privately owned logistics and global trade management company, received five contracts in April amounting to £186 million, including one for £86 million.

A number of companies with expertise in the field which offered to supply PPE said they had been ignored by the department.

In early September details were released of two contracts, worth a total of £8.4 million, that had been awarded to a dormant company with one director. The contracts for the delivery of hand sanitiser were awarded to Taeg Energy Ltd. The first one began and ended on 19th April, indicating delivery of one bulk order. This contract, worth £4.208 million, was replicated the next day through a second, identical contract. In February, Companies House records showed that the business had been dormant since May 2017 and did not appear to have traded since it was set up in May 2016. A publication, Byline Times, which tried to contact the company for comment said that no contact details for the firm or its owner could be found. It later emerged that on 1st March Taeg Energy had been awarded a £43.8 million contract for the supply of hand sanitiser by the Department of Health and Social Care, without going to competitive tender.

Details were also published of a £692,000 contract for the supply of gowns awarded to Kau Media Group Ltd, a small digital marketing agency based in Hammersmith, London. The firm’s website says the company specialises in social media, search engine optimisation, online advertising and e-commerce – with no mention of supplying PPE. The contract began on 25th April and, again, ended on the same day, signalling a bulk delivery.

A spokesperson for the department said that nearly 28 billion items of PPE had been ordered from UK-based manufacturers and international partners. “We have a robust process to ensure orders are of high-quality standard and meet commercial due diligence.” Quite a number of the companies had links with Chinese firms which produce PPE and from where the largest amounts of PPE were sourced.

In early July, the Chancellor said that a total of £15 billion had been allocated for PPE.

There is, it appears, a legal loophole which allows the government to award public contracts without competition during an emergency. One estimate reckoned that at least £180 million worth of PPE contracts had been awarded to individuals with links to the Conservative Party. That was, without doubt, a very conservative estimate.

 

Legal action

On 23rd August it was reported that a cross-party group of MPs was launching legal action to force the government to reveal full details of contracts awarded for personal protective equipment. The group accused ministers of breaching transparency rules and demanded the immediate disclosure of the contracts, which were valued at more than £5 billion.

The Labour, Lib Dem and Green MPs cited a series of contracts over which concerns had been raised. Full details of the contract awarded to Ayanda Capital worth £252 million had not been published; and the 50 million masks supplied were reportedly deemed unsuitable for use by NHS workers.

In a letter, drawn up by the Good Law Project, the government was accused of “repeated failure” to publish notices revealing that contracts have been awarded, breaching a legal duty to do so within 30 days for contracts worth more than £10,000. It also claimed the government had repeatedly broken a pledge to publish details of the contracts within 20 days.

According to the government, more than 600 contracts for PPE had been concluded with nearly 200 different suppliers, ranging in value from less than £1 million to more than £250 million, to a total of £5.5 billion.

A government spokesperson said: “Throughout this global pandemic, we have been working tirelessly to deliver PPE to protect people on the frontline. Over 2.9 billion items have been delivered, and more than 30 billion have been ordered from UK-based manufacturers and international partners to provide a continuous supply which meets the needs of health and social care staff both now and in the future.

“We are absolutely committed to being transparent in the awarding of contracts and we aim to publish these as soon as possible.”

 

Defence by deputy chief medical officer

Dr Jenny Harries, a deputy chief medical officer for England, speaking at the Downing Street press briefing on 19th April, defended the government’s response to the coronavirus outbreak and its distribution of personal protective equipment to frontline workers, stating that the UK had from the start, and still had, a “very clear plan” for tackling the COVID-19 crisis.

The BBC’s health editor, Hugh Pym, had asked if she could comment on reports that supplies of PPE were allowed to run down in the couple of years before the pandemic and why had not more been done to get hold of more PPE in March and early February? This followed other reports that many NHS trusts were suffering critical shortages. The first part of his question was ignored completely.

The Education Secretary, Gavin Williamson, was first to respond, saying that there had been an “enormous national effort to secure PPE from right around the globe”.

He continued: “But you know, the government, from the first moment that we were in a situation where the scientific advice was highlighting to us that we were facing a real challenge in terms of coronavirus, and this could potentially evolve into a pandemic, every resource of government has been deployed to not just expanding what we need in terms of PPE, but also ventilators, and we've seen a massive growth in the number of ventilators that we have available in our hospitals. And we keep adding and building to the stock of what we've got.”

Dr Harries then said: “We had and we still have a very clear plan – we had a containment phase and it was very successful. We had very strict quarantine regimes from high-risk areas, we followed up individual cases and families wherever that was possible. But once you end up with seeding and cases across the community, our focus has to be on managing the clinical conditions of those individuals.”

Addressing the issue of PPE distribution, Dr Harries said: “I think we have had, if I might say from my own professional perspective, we could perhaps have a more adult, and more detailed conversation about PPE supplies.”

Quite what Dr Harries meant about “adult conversation” was not made clear – but clearly the good lady did not intend to have one at this particular time with the questioner. One would assume that adult conversations were taking place within her department but perhaps that was not the case. Otherwise, her comment was totally unwarranted and out of place in the press briefing and in more normal times would have led to calls for her to step down from her post. It is unacceptable for civil servants to try to make political points. Obfuscation, half-truths and non-answers to questions are the prerogative of politicians – and are what Messrs Johnson, Hancock, Raab and Gove, etc., excel at. And her later comment (see below) that the UK had been “an international exemplar in preparedness” was hyperbole worthy of Boris Johnson but, again, a very unwise comment from the doctor.

She continued: “I think it is important to remember that, although there may be elements of distribution problems across the UK at different times and in different places, this is a huge pull on services which we have never seen before. And we have managed actually despite signalling many potential shortfalls to continue to supply going forward, and even as I stand here, I know with the gown position, for example, that even though when orders go in overseas, supplies may be very different what is received to what we think we’re going to get. We just need to think carefully through what has been achieved and the challenges which are acknowledged ahead.”

In an earlier comment, Dr Harries said: “I think we need to step back a little bit and start from the beginning of this which is the UK, regardless of the position that we may be in now, has been an international exemplar in preparedness. So the fact that there is a pandemic influenza stockpile is considered a very high quality mark of a prepared country in international terms.”

Her comments came after the government said that a delivery of 84 tonnes of PPE for front-line workers had been delayed. The shipment, which included 400,000 surgical gowns, was due to arrive in the UK from Turkey. When it eventually arrived, the bulk turned out to be unsuitable.

Speaking later on the PPE shortages, Chris Hopson, chief executive of NHS Providers, said: “No one in the NHS wanted to be where we now are on gowns, with a significant number of trusts reporting critically low stocks. On the current position in trusts, it is important to understand what ‘running out of gowns’ means. Usually it doesn’t mean that no member of staff in that trust has access to a fluid repellent gown or higher levels of protection than a basic apron.

“Trusts tell us that they are adopting a number of different approaches to address current shortages. These include concentrating the use of fluid repellent gowns in areas of highest risk such as intensive and critical care and using fluid resistant, as opposed to fluid repellent, coveralls with an additional apron, in line with the advice.”

 

Government opted out of EU scheme – or did it?

The Guardian reported on 13th April that Britain missed three opportunities to be part of an EU scheme to bulk-buy masks, gowns and gloves and had been absent from key talks about future purchases.

Across Europe doctors and nurses were preparing to receive the first of €1.5 billion (£1.3 billion) worth of PPE within days or a maximum of two weeks through a joint procurement scheme involving 25 countries and eight companies, according to internal EU documents.

The development came as anger grew over PPE shortages in Britain, with particular concerns in early April over stocks of full-sleeve gowns running out. The gowns are designed to resist droplets which can spread coronavirus and were shown to be highly effective at protecting medics in Italy.

A survey by the Doctors’ Association UK – which describes itself as “the voice of frontline doctors” – found that only 52% of clinicians carrying out the highest-risk procedures said they had access to the correct full-sleeve gowns, while The Guardian learnt that a consignment of at least 100,000 gowns from China had to be rejected when it was found to be substandard. Other consignments thought to be gowns had been mislabelled and were other equipment.

The Prime Minister’s official spokesman, however, said the UK did not miss out by opting out of an EU scheme to bulk-buy masks, gowns and gloves to protect care workers. He said: “Participating in this scheme would not have allowed us to do anything that we have not been able to do ourselves.”

On 22nd April, Matt Hancock was asked if it was a political decision not to take part in the EU’s PPE scheme and he responded that there had been no political decision not to participate, and went on to say that the UK was a part of the scheme.

The Permanent Under-Secretary at the Foreign Office, Sir Simon McDonald, told the Foreign Affairs committee that ministers were briefed about opportunities but decided not to take part. He said: “It was a political decision.” He later retracted that remark and in a letter clarifying his comments said they were a mistake.

When it was reported in March that the UK had not taken part in the EU scheme, Downing Street claimed it had missed the deadline because of a communication problem. The Prime Minister’s spokesperson had initially said the government had not taken part because the UK was “no longer a member of the EU” and was “making our own efforts” but later said the UK missed the deadline because it did not receive an invitation from the European Commission in time.

Shortages of protective equipment were known to be causing considerable anxiety among NHS and care home staff, with the death toll among doctors and nurses continuing to rise. Matt Hancock, the Health Secretary, said that a number of NHS workers had died but “We aren’t aware of any links from shortages of PPE to any of these deaths.”

The Royal College of Nursing advised nurses they should refuse to treat patients with COVID-19 “as a last resort” if they could not access the full PPE they needed.

• At the beginning of May, with PPE shortages affecting numerous hospitals in the UK, The Daily Telegraph reported that millions of pieces of PPE were being shipped from Britain to Europe.

Political connections prove helpful in gaining contracts

A report by the National Audit Office (NAO), published in November 2020, found that by 31st July over 8,600 contracts related to the government’s response to the pandemic had been awarded, with a value of £18 billion. The Department of Health & Social Care and its national bodies had awarded 7,477 contracts with a value of £16.2 billion. PPE accounted for 80% of the number of contracts awarded, and 68% of the total value of contracts awarded. Across government, over 6,900 contracts were awarded for PPE, with a total value of £12.3 billion.

The cross-government PPE team established a high-priority lane to assess and process potential PPE leads from government officials, ministers’ offices, MPs and members of the House of Lords, senior NHS staff and other

health professionals. The NAO stated that PPE suppliers with political connections using the high-priority channel were 10 times more likely to be successful, compared with suppliers without such connections. Almost 500 suppliers with links to politicians or senior officials were referred to the channel, where their pitches for contracts were automatically treated as credible by government officials charged with procuring PPE.

 

Inadequate stocks of PPE led to higher costs

In a second report in November, the NAO said the UK spent £10 billion extra in inflated prices for PPE because of an inadequate stockpile and a surge in global demand. The Department for Health and Social Care (DHSC) procurement officers paid over 1,300% more for some items compared with 2019 prices.

The report said that, between February and July, the DHSC spent £12.5 billion on 32 billion items of PPE, with huge increases in the price paid compared with 2019, ranging from a 166% rise in the cost of respirator masks to a 1,310% increase in the price of body bags.

Of the 32 billion items of PPE procured between February and July, only 2.6 billion items were delivered to frontline organisations in that period, the NAO said, adding that demand was so high in April and May that stock levels were negligible for most types of protection, it added.

 

PPE not only area where approaches ignored by the government

Although numerous companies claimed they had offered to supply PPE for the NHS but had been ignored, that wasn’t the only area in which private firms without political connections were cast aside.

A letter in The Times of 16th November from one of the founders (Professor Colin Fink) of Micropathology Ltd, based on the University of Warwick’s Science Park, stated that the firm had offered its assay to Public Health England but received no response.

Micropathology Ltd is the largest rapid diagnostic laboratory for infection in Europe, based on sample throughput and organism portfolio. The letter stated: “Our 29 post-doctoral scientists developed a highly efficient rapid test (assay) for the coronavirus in February, and we found our first positive case on 5th March.” The final paragraph read: “Now the government is setting up a big coronavirus diagnostic laboratory in Leamington Spa. We have tried to offer our expertise to provide a more efficient and economic system to save money and speed diagnoses, but have been left with the impression that the exercise is run by accountants and technicians with blank cheques and little interest in expertise.”

The letter could hardly have been damning of the UK government’s approach to dealing with COVID-19.

 

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