Exclusive: The Government has incinerated or written off £1.4 BILLION worth of Covid PPE, provided by one supplier in the summer of 2020 - it is the single most wasteful public contract of the whole pandemic. Thread 1/
Full Support Healthcare, a company of 25 staff based in Wellingborough, won orders totalling £1.8bn for aprons, masks and gowns. But after repeated FOI requests, the Dept for Health & Social Care’s PPE procurement partner, SCCL, revealed almost all of it will never be used. 2/
The company met the terms of the contract, quickly supplying high quality PPE, as per previous pandemics. So why wasn’t its stock used? We put that question several times to the government and never got an answer. 3/
In 2022 the Dept for Health said £85m worth of Full Support PPE wasn’t used, which is approx 6% of the true figure. The Conservative Party also failed to respond to requests for comment. 4/
Last July a massive illegal dump of Full Support’s PPE was found in the New Forest. We’ve seen documents which show it had been re-sold by the government - auctioned off for cheap to a third-party private company. It was considered a fire risk and eventually cleared. 5/
The Dept for Health continues to store about 800m items of Full Support PPE (approx 40% of what was delivered) that will never be used in care settings and is basically sitting in warehouses pending incineration. £100m+ of taxpayers’ money has likely been spent on its storage. 6/
Full Support Healthcare was founded by a former nurse, Sarah Stoute. Her husband Richard Stoute is a co-director. There is no suggestion they or the company acted improperly. 7/
It’s impossible to know what profits the couple have made because they based their business offshore in Jersey in 2021 for privacy reasons. They continue to pay all UK tax. 8/
However, since winning the Government contract they have purchased a £30m seafront villa in Barbados, a yacht, a £6m house in the south of England and Keysoe International Equestrian Centre in Bedfordshire. 9/
You can read the full story here, including with responses from Labour and the Lib Debs: bbc.co.uk/news/articles/…
Share this Scrolly Tale with your friends.
A Scrolly Tale is a new way to read Twitter threads with a more visually immersive experience.
Discover more beautiful Scrolly Tales like this.