The government has claimed it has spent £15 billion on PPE as a result of coronavirus. Given that we know there shortages of PPE until very recently I am taking ‘spent' as meaning that amount has been used.
Now, there are 500,000 front line staff in the NHS who need PPE.
That's £30,000 each.
If care staff are added maybe 2 million people are affected, but many of the others will have much simpler PPE need.
Assume it's spread evenly. That's £7,500 each.
And the crisis is 120 days old at most. But in work terms call it 100 days at most each.
So that's 200 million work days.
Or £75 per person for PPE per work day.
People I speak to say this sounds absurd. A gown is 50p. Gloves and masks are normal and used all the time. They cost pennies each. OK, lots are used, but not that many. And sure full suits are more, but most aren't wearing them. And visor masks? How much are they?
Something about this does not stack, especially when we know most could not get PPE for love nor money during this period.
Who is not telling the truth?
And who is making a fortune?
Or is there fraud somewhere?
As an auditor (and I was for many years) I smell what I would simply suggest is ‘something not right'.
This claim needs investigation.
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See Craig Murray’s blog from yesterday about Adanya Capital. https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/ It seems they are a ‘family wealth’ management company in Central London, balance sheet worth £2m (most apparently suspiciously intangible) and for tax purposes controlled from Mauritius (where there is no tax on business conducted outside Mauritius). Seems they got a contract for £250 million (yes!) to supply PPE. No tendering or anything as done under the emergency regulations. This seems exactly like the ferry company with no ships as there is apparently no evidence that Adanya Capital has ever had anything to do with PPE, or has any production or storage facilities. Presumably just taking a large slice off the top and then sub-contracting to others. I think your £15 billion could be taken care of quite easily by that sort of City entity.
Some of it might have been spent on defective kit.
Where I work, we have a distribution centre for the city for PPE. Half the room they work in is PPE that is not fit for purpose and is being prepped for return.
I kid you not, there are boxes and boxes of it.
I do worry however that the Tories seem to to have a whole load of cling-ons and ‘favourites’ whom they like to give money to – people who are considered to be ‘one of them’ – the Dido Hardings of this world, who are of course not part of the public sector.
It stinks. Trying to lose the figure into everything else, believing, presumably, that no one (among 65 million!) would notice. Will be interested in your research into who awarded and were awarded the contracts, their credibility in this business, and whether there was an open tender process.
If there were an independent investigation/audit (there won’t be), perhaps they could give you a call (they won’t).
I suppose that you have to add transport, storage and distribution to those costs. Flying 2 plane loads of defective PPE from Turkey can’t have been cheap, even if they did use the RAF. Even so, I doubt if it accounts for the huge cost.
I’m sure that you will be aware that Jolyon Maughm is calling for a judicial review of three of the PPE contracts.
I hope that publishing a link is OK, Richard?
https://goodlawproject.org/news/the-ppe-fiasco/
Jo is doing a good job in this from another angle
This is a scandal that should bring this government down. We have contracts handed out, to companies that have no relevant experience, no manufacturing capability, no supply chain contacts; it’s not even clear if anything was deliver. I’m afraid this looks like exactly what it is, rats looting a sinking ship. This money is being funneled to offshore companies, so that it can be distributed to friends and supporters of the party. It’s banana republic stuff, and evidence that at least some of this loot goes into the pockets of MSM opinion makers can be gleamed from their near complete silence on the issue.
If a Corbyn government has given a contract for 20 quid to similar companies, it would be headline news everyday for at least a fortnight.
Another very very odd “supplier”
https://goodlawproject.org/news/ppe-supplied-by-a-sweet-wholesaler/
What would be most interesting would be to keep watch for the sums donated to the Tory party from these happy recipients of taxpayer largesss.
And here’s another one:
https://bylinetimes.com/2020/07/02/lifestyle-company-with-no-employees-or-trading-history-handed-25-million-ppe-contract/
No wonder Richard’s “Auditor’s Nose” is twitching, as is mine! The company, Ayanda Capital, referenced by Tim Rideout at the top of the responses and in Craig Murray’s blog, is a Financial Management vehicle for the Horlick family. Tory donors, perhaps? There’s a strong stench of incompetence and corruption hanging over the whole matter of PPE provision, which in turn raises a number of questions:
These high-value contracts are being awarded without proper tendering processes and without parliamentary scrutiny, so how do the awardees get to hear about the opportunities in the first place? Are they individually invited to apply? They are clearly not vetted for suitability, e.g. experience in the provision of PPE, sufficient staff resources and working capital to manage very large-value contracts, nor does there appear to be effective management of quality control of the PPE, so why is due diligence not done by Government departments? There is clearly a developing need for a public enquiry about misuse of public funds, so why has the Auditor General been silent so far? What are the procedures to get the Auditor General involved and can members of the public initiate such procedures?
I suspect getting to the bottom of this will be difficult as political donations come in various guises — at national party level, at local branch level, direct support for candidates, dark money channelled through other jurisdictions (like the DUP facilitation of money for Brexit), in-kind favours etc — so I suspect we’ll never know the whole story, but it does need to be aired by the mainstream media so that the wider public is engaged and the Government is forced to face scrutiny, which raises another question: Why hasn’t Keir Starmer raised this at PMQs?
If you go to the Good Law Project link I posted earlier you can find all the pre-action correspondence between Jo Maugham and the government solicitor. The process used for awarding these contracts is explained in the course of it.
It wasn’t subject to the usual process, apparently, because it was done as an ’emergency’ under the Coronavirus Act.
Surely, auditors are there to find systemic errors in accountancy procedures. This appears to be a different type of matter. As an auditor do you think it should be reported to the competent authorities? If so to whom?
NAO
Fraud comes to mind here which is recognised as criminal but there are consequences too which are clearly antisocial but I doubt regarded as criminal. We’re talking about money created for the purpose by a compliant BofE, led by Andrew Bailey, spent into the economy merely for the purpose of enriching the recipients. This can hardly be said to be productive and so is clearly devaluing the currency everyone in the nation uses. That, to my mind, is the greater crime and should be understood as such and outlawed and prosecuted as such. There ought, as they say, to be a law.