Overspend/under delivery by the former government confirmed!

Kalm

I shall be taking the next Pandemic alert with a massive pinch of sodium chloride. What with a war footing, UFO's, a shortage of Guinness, migrants, muslims taking over....."move along" as the good copper says......

shortage of Guinness
😯 you just reminded me I have a tin of Guinness languishing around somewhere; no-one drinks it and its bb date may have passed by.

I'll go and put it in the casserole I'm making.

Mollygo

^Sunak had to call an election^
Agreed.
^ Labour Party were right after all with the holes in spending.^
The same holes that they said didn’t exist when Sunak proposed to cut the WFA to help fill them?
The policy that Starmer condemned when he was in opposition, but carried out once in power in order to fill the hole that suddenly existed?

The problem is, Mollygo, this hole isn't like your normal hole such as a hole in a bucket, a pothole, a sink hole or even a Bernard Cribbins' type of hole in the road, it's a black hole.

Black Holes are very difficult to detect because they're invisible.
There may be many more. 😯

petal53

Lots of groups discussing things costs lots of money. After 14 years in opposition, only now do they decide to discuss things to decide what to do.

This has always been the way of government, most work is done by working commitees, not by shouting at each other in PMQs

David49

We know that the government carried out a large scale rehearsal for a major pandemic about 10 yrs ago, one of the shortcomings was lack of PPE.

They knew that a large store of PPE was needed but did nothing about it, when Covid started they had nothing outside the regular supply chain.

How much emergency PPE stockpile is available now?.

Yes, a rehearsal was carried out under the stewardship of Jeremy Hunt as Health Secretary, and basically filed away in the 'too hard' drawer.

HousePlantQueen

David49

We know that the government carried out a large scale rehearsal for a major pandemic about 10 yrs ago, one of the shortcomings was lack of PPE.

They knew that a large store of PPE was needed but did nothing about it, when Covid started they had nothing outside the regular supply chain.

How much emergency PPE stockpile is available now?.

Yes, a rehearsal was carried out under the stewardship of Jeremy Hunt as Health Secretary, and basically filed away in the 'too hard' drawer.

If you look at the Covid Inquiry Interim report which I linked to a few days ago, or even the bits I quoted from it, you will see that there were several 'pandemic' exercises carried out at various levels. Most of the recommendations which followed from those exercises were not implemented and some of the people who should have been given the reports from those exercises weren't even aware that they had been carried out.

As to the matter of out of date PPE. If it's out of date it's out of date and we none of us have enough (or any) expertise in the matter of PPE to be able to make a judgement. I think that more will come to light as further Inquiry reports are published.

But keeping the stuff in date is a matter of stock control and every good storekeeper should know that. The PPE which was getting too near to its use by date should have been issued and replacement stock bought in. This would apply to well before the pandemic, it should have applied from whenever the emergency stocks were set up. Unfortunately, the responsibility for those stocks went to a private company, at some time, (tory 'small state, privatise everything) which clearly didn't do its job properly.

The extract I quoted also pointed out that the civil servants who were supposed to be working on emergency planning were taken off the job to deal with 'No Deal' Brexit planning...

Emergency planning is an ongoing part of the government's job. It is, in theory, continuous.

PPE, there was a large quantity written off purely because it had not got the “CE” mark on it and it was determined
“unsafe”. As an alternative operatives used home made masks or no masks and aprons.
How sensible was that.

David49

PPE, there was a large quantity written off purely because it had not got the “CE” mark on it and it was determined
“unsafe”. As an alternative operatives used home made masks or no masks and aprons.
How sensible was that.

Can you give a source for that? Was that PPE from the 'emergency supply' or was it PPE purchased during the pandemic by one of the government's VIP lane mates?

I thought we were just talking about the UK's supposed emergency stockpile.

That was emergency supply, you know there was no emergency supply.

Should have read

There was no advanced emergency supply.

David49

Should have read

There was no advanced emergency supply.

There was an 'emergency supply'. Most of it proved to be out of date and useless. It was all looked after by a private company in a warehouse. Matt Hancock, in his evidence, said that there were logistical difficulties in distributing it. (See the Interim Report) Which' of course; was only half the story.