Module 5: Much-anticipated report on PPE scandal due next week
One of the most shameful aspects of the Government’s pandemic response will be examined in detail next week, in the latest report from the Covid-19 Inquiry.
The Module 5 report will cover the UK’s failure to ensure adequate supplies of PPE and other vital equipment. Evidence given to the public hearings, held in the Spring, exposed how dangerously unprepared the UK was despite repeated warnings in the years before the pandemic.
For bereaved families, these were not abstract failures of administration. Many believe their loved ones died, at least in part, because health and care services lacked the equipment, supplies and systems needed to keep patients and staff safe.
What makes these failures even harder to bear is that well-connected individuals were making enormous profits from these same failures. This included a ‘VIP lane’ which helped those with political connections to jump the queue and secure huge contracts. No other country chose to create a system like this, and this report must deliver accountability for the failures and decisions that allowed that to happen.
The report will be published at 12pm on Tuesday, July 14th.
We have asked the Inquiry to make several recommendations to ensure these failures cannot happen again.
