The Covid 19 Inquiry has produced a withering verdict on the UK’s pandemic time procurement difficulties, the “vast” amount of money wasted – and called for the creation of a dedicated “pool of officials” who to deal with future emergencies.
Setting up a programme of training in emergency procurement and distribution of healthcare equipment is one of 11 recommendations in the inquiry’s latest report.
“The UK government and devolved administrations should each establish a pool of officials who are trained in the emergency procurement and distribution of healthcare equipment,” the report says.
“Completion of the training should be mandatory for at least 20% of the workforce of each nation’s central healthcare equipment procurement bodies and kept up to date through annual refresher courses.”
According to the panel, chaired by Baroness Heather Hallett, more than £42bn was spent on procuring personal protective equipment (PPE), ventilators and testing equipment between January 2020 and June 2022.
Approximately £14.9bn of the total was spent on PPE, but nearly two-thirds of that figure was wasted. The report says the UK was “unprepared for emergency procurement at pandemic scale” and had an inadequate stockpile of PPE and plans that had never been stress-tested.
The dire situation forced officials and ministers to improvise, rapidly establishing new emergency procurement and distribution systems within days. However the report says that the creation of a “high priority lane” for would-be suppliers – also known as the “VIP lane” – was “misguided”.
The VIP lane was set up under intense pressure from ministers to ensure that offers of help were properly managed at a time of crisis. But Hallett said the scheme “undermined the enormous and otherwise well-intentioned efforts made by procurement officials and it undermined public trust”. The report says the VIP lane “must not be repeated” in any future crisis.
One chapter of the report relates to PPE Medpro Ltd, which was introduced to the VIP lane by Conservative peer Michelle Mone. Her husband, Douglas Barrowman, had significant involvement with the business. PPE Medpro supplied £122m worth of surgical gowns to the NHS in 2020, but all of the products were rejected by the Department of Health and Social Care. The chapter is currently unpublished, pending the outcome of legal proceedings.
Elsewhere in the report, Hallett’s recommendations include placing data and technology at the centre of emergency procurement and distribution of healthcare equipment.
“Within three years of the publication of this report, the systems for the procurement and distribution of healthcare equipment should be digitalised and interoperable across the UK government and devolved administrations,” the report says.
“As a minimum, these systems should be able to use technology to collect, share and analyse data across the UK in real time on: pandemic stockpiles, health and social care sector inventories and usage rates; offers of supply, enabling automated comparison, triaging and processing; non-compliant healthcare equipment entering the market; supply chains, including international delivery times and domestic logistics and distribution data; procurement and distribution workforce capacity; and spending – automatically identifying, collecting and collating key contract data for publication.”
The inquiry also calls for UK government and devolved administrations to ensure that they maintain a “minimum three-month supply” of PPE for the entire health and social care system in the UK and retain stock that is “better aligned” with the range and severity of pandemic risks identified in the National Security Risk Assessment. That proposal is supposed to be enacted within 12 months.
Twelve months is also the timeframe the panel gives the UK government, Scottish Government, Welsh Government and Northern Ireland Executive to create new systems for the emergency procurement and distribution of healthcare equipment.
According to the panel, the systems must “integrate procurement and distribution” and have the ability to rapidly scale up efficient operations, “including through integrated emergency procurement teams and automating the triaging and processing of offers of supply”. The systems are also supposed to be able to use market research, modelling and price benchmarking to ensure value for money.
A further recommendation seeks to ensure that the inquiry team’s earlier proposal for the creation of a UK-wide whole-system civil emergency strategy includes “specific objectives for international trade and domestic industry during a pandemic”.
It says those objectives must include the establishment of trading alliances “to diversify overseas sources of raw materials and healthcare equipment” in advance of the next pandemic and a “robust plan” to enable domestic manufacturers rapidly to retool and repurpose facilities for the production of healthcare equipment.
‘The UK was simply not ready to compete’
Hallett said that if ministers and officials had been better equipped with appropriate plans, information and systems, then pandemic-time procurement decisions would have been easier, fairer and far less costly. She added that equipment would also have reached those who needed it faster.
“When the Covid-19 pandemic struck, the world entered a desperate race to secure vital healthcare equipment and supplies,” Hallett said. “In the global battle to procure equipment and supplies, the UK was simply not ready to compete – the bodies responsible were caught off-guard, with inadequate and untested plans to increase emergency procurement and distribution operations rapidly.
“The waste of taxpayers’ money was vast. The public must be able to trust that their money is being spent with propriety, fairness and transparency. Public confidence – so important in an emergency – was undermined by the failures in procurement.
“The changes I recommend are an investment in the resilience and preparedness of the UK. They are a small price to pay to ensure that, next time, the public can be confident in the crucial spending decisions that will have to be made and that key healthcare equipment gets to those who need it at the right time. A better prepared emergency procurement system will reduce the cost of obtaining essential supplies and save lives.”
A government spokesperson said: “The pandemic had a profound and lasting impact across our society and this government is committed to learning the lessons of the Covid inquiry so that we are protected and prepared for the future.
“We will of course carefully consider the inquiry's recommendations in detail and we will respond in due course.”