Burak Bir
14 July 2026•Update: 14 July 2026
Then Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s Conservative government wasted nearly £10 billion ($13.3 billion) on personal protective equipment (PPE) during the COVID-19 pandemic because of flawed procurement, an official inquiry found Tuesday.
The Module 5 report of the UK COVID-19 Inquiry, which focused on procurement, found that nearly two-thirds of the roughly £14.9 billion spent on PPE was wasted, The Guardian reported.
Inquiry chair Heather Hallett also criticized the then-Conservative government’s controversial “high priority lane,” also known as the “VIP lane,” which gave priority to PPE contract offers from companies with political connections.
One controversial contract involved PPE Medpro, a newly formed company linked to then-Conservative peer Michelle Mone, which was awarded two contracts worth £203 million ($271 million) after Mone first approached Michael Gove, then Cabinet Office minister, in May 2020.
The inquiry heard evidence relating to PPE Medpro, and Hallett, a former Court of Appeal judge, has reached her conclusions, but they have not yet been published because of a long-running investigation by the National Crime Agency into the procurement of the contracts.
In her report, Hallett said the “high priority lane” was a misguided attempt to prioritize the most credible offers and that it “embedded unfairness” in procurement.
“Some suppliers received favourable treatment because they had connections to government,” the report found.
According to the report, the waste of PPE procured as the crisis unfolded — mainly from manufacturers in China — was widely reported within months, as supplies piled up and began to be disposed of.
“The UK entered the pandemic with an inadequate stockpile of PPE and plans that had never been stress-tested,” Hallett said.
“The waste of public money was vast and could have been avoided. Of approximately £14.9bn spent on PPE, nearly two-thirds – almost £10bn – was wasted,” she added.
