Thread by @allthecitizens

We have found that the UK gov paid substantially over the odds for many PPE items during the pandemic - once by as much as 226% - even when you take into consideration inflated prices caused by spiking demand. THREAD from @allthecitizens and @bylinetimes

Finding out how much the UK gov paid for PPE is not easy.

Most UK Covid19 contracts are redacted regarding quantity and unit price. Sections 43 of the Freedom of Information Act is used by the government to justify this.
legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2000/36/…

Often, we can only work out price-per-unit because the total number of units is accidentally left visible.

But we found 3 contracts for hand-sanitiser where all appear to have cost HIGHER than the avg price, as recommended by the NHS-facing ‘Efficio Pricing Benchmark Analysis’.

A July 2020 hand sanitiser contract with Group 55 Ltd for £135,270 says it was for £2.11 per 100ml. Another contract with them lists the same

According to Efficio, the average price was £0.65 per 100ml

Was Group 55 really paid 226% higher than norm?

contractsfinder.service.gov.uk/Notice/e07d0da…

Did the UK gov also buy hand sanitiser for 3 times the market rate?

Today you can buy hand sanitiser for c.30p per 100ml from Amazon for 67p, not £2.10 Yes, there was a global shortage then - but hand sanitiser isn't hard to make. Why such high prices? Group 55 didn’t reply.

According to our source, the Efficio pricing benchmark analysis was “regularly used by the ‘PPE Cell’ - the unit run by the Cabinet Office during the pandemic to source PPE”. So the government was likely aware what a reasonable price to pay for hand sanitiser then was.

We can also compare the Group 55 price to a larger NHS contract with ECOLAB Ltd in April 2021. That £32.5m win for 5 million litres of hand sanitiser works out at £0.65 per 100ml, not the £2.10 Group 55 was paid.
contractsfinder.service.gov.uk/notice/49151aa…

It wasn’t just hand gel where there were massive PPE price differences during the early pandemic. The item we have most data on is IIR masks, the disposable mask often used in the NHS. Efficio’s data shows these masks increased from £0.16 to £0.51 at the pandemic's start

We also found 7 contracts for IIR masks where the unit price was visible or calculable from the number of units listed. In 3 of these, the unit price for one IIR mask was significantly above the average price listed by Efficio.

One of the biggest concerns was the price per unit for facemasks paid to now-infamous Ayanda Capital. Although heavily redacted, their £252.5m contract showed 50 million FFP2/N95 masks at £155m and 150 million IIR masks at £97.5m.
contractsfinder.service.gov.uk/Notice/411d0ae…

So Ayanda’s FFP2 masks cost £3.10 per item, their IIR masks £0.65 per item. These prices higher than the average prices of £2.38 (30%) and £0.51 (27.5%) listed by Efficio.

Ayanda got £0.72 higher for each of the FFP2 masks and £0.14 higher for the IIR masks

The over-the-odds FFP2 masks bought from Ayanda were reported unfit for purpose, though Ayanda CEO Tim Horlick denied this. They were one of the companies with government connections funnelled through a VIP contracts lane, bypassing other firms bbc.co.uk/news/uk-536728…

Ayanda capital spokesperson Damien McCrystal said the company was bound by a ‘commercial confidentiality contract’ so could not discuss how much they paid. He said, “there was tremendous competition from other health services around the world.”

Other contracts, though, show the Department of Health got better prices for IIR masks. They bought two lots of Type II IIR Surgical Masks from Bryson Products for 40p and 34p respectively - over 38% lower than Ayanda’s price.
contractsfinder.service.gov.uk/Notice/e0fd7cc…

But we found even more costly price-per-unit contracts for IIR masks than Ayanda Capital’s. A £69.6m contract with Uniserve Ltd in April 2020 for 80m IIR masks works out at £0.87 per mask, 70% above Efficio’s guideline of £0.51. contractsfinder.service.gov.uk/Notice/bc5b55d…

We asked Uniserve why their product cost 70% (£28.8m) more than the guideline price. They said the cost of transporting the goods was included in the price and were confident they “delivered good value for money for DHSC during incredibly difficult and volatile market conditions”

Uniserve also compared their contract with parallel supplier Purple Surgical, whose cost per unit for IIR masks was 78p (above the 51p average). saying Purple Surgical's contract did not include transport costs. When asked why their unit price was so high, Purple Surgical said..

We also found other cases where failed redaction of contracts revealed higher-than-average price-per-units.

A £3m DoH contract with Network Medical for face visors showed 600,000 bought at £5 per visor - 190% above the £1.72 Efficio guideline price
contractsfinder.service.gov.uk/Notice/b0f83d0…

Network Medical forwarded us a press release from their parent company, Innova Medical, about their work with DHSC but declined to comment specifically on why the cost per unit of their face masks was so high.

A number of contracts for nitrile gloves were also visible. One in particular, for 2.7bn units, seemingly paid well over the odds for this type of PPE.

DHSC bought 2.7bn non-sterile disposable nitrile gloves for £302m in May 2020 from Yancheng New Cloud Medical Equipment: £0.17 per item. This is 70% higher than the Efficio guideline of £0.10 per unit. YNCME did not reply to our request for comment.
contractsfinder.service.gov.uk/Notice/c09c9a5…

Overall, opacity rules. When we submitted a Freedom of Information request asking how many medical gowns were purchased in June 2020 for almost £100m from a Chinese state company, the government replied:
whatdotheyknow.com/request/china_…

This month Dominic Cummings blamed Matt Hancock for the procurement mess, saying deals which were > 25% market value were cancelled by DHSC. But our investigation raises questions about why some other deals which seem to have cost more than 25% above market value went ahead?

We asked the Department of Health why some contracts had cost so much more than the average price. A government spokesperson said: “Throughout the pandemic our top priority has always been saving lives“, and that demand for PPE created a ‘highly competitive market’.

We also asked procurement consultancy Efficio for comment, but they said “We do not comment on the specific details of any of our clients or their projects.”

Without more detail, it's impossible to tell how public money was spent. The data we CAN see on price per unit raises questions.
Why were prices so divergent between different contracts?
We are not saying any company did anything wrong or illegal, but more clarity is needed.

Contracts where the government paid substantially above the odds should be investigated. @allthecitizens calls for an inquiry into the government’s handling of the pandemic, not least to see what some companies earned from items designed to keep our doctors & nurses alive.

You can read our write up by @jwsal of this investigation at @BylineTimes bylinetimes.com/2021/06/21/how…