Readers' letters: PPE scandal has cost us nearly £10 billion

The Good Law Project has revealed that in response to a FOI request, the UK Government wasted nearly £10 billion on PPE, “more than it would cost to give every nurse in the NHS a 100 per cent bonus on their salary.”

Government acquisition of personal protection equipment was badly handled and cost nearly £10 bn

Of this, £3.254bn was for PPE not suitable for any use and PPE not suitable for use in the NHS. Another £4.7bn was wasted paying inflated prices for PPE we didn’t need, and £750m for PPE that expired before it could be used.

The Department has also written off £1.231bn in PPE which hasn’t even been delivered. Of the useless PPE purchased, the Department is having to pay for it to be recycled or burned.

Between April 2020 and August 2021 the Department paid £677.6m to store excess PPE and is still paying £500,000 a day for storage.

And remember the VIP fast lane for PPE contracts, reserved for political chums. Civil servants were prevented from procuring usable PPE at fair prices because they were told to service the so-called VIPs.

This combination of incompetence and corruption is a big reason the Union is irretrievably broken.

Leah Gunn Barrett, Edinburgh.

Partygate reveals a deeper malaise

People should look a little deeper into the partygate scandal. Not just Boris, but dozens of people - ministers, special advisors and civil servants - attended many parties during the lockdowns. Clearly, none of these people believed that the lockdown measures were necessary, otherwise they would have complied with them.

Neither ambitious Tory ministers nor opposition parties will address this, because all were cheering on the restrictions or demanding even harsher controls. That unwillingness to address the possibility that the lockdowns and the resulting vast damage to our economy and civil liberties were unjustified is the real scandal.

Otto Inglis, Crossgates, Fife.

Judges are strictly dancing on thin ice

I find the judges on Dancing On Ice difficult to fathom.

They constantly tell the female competitors to skate alone and not hang onto their professional partners, yet they put Rachel Stevens through and sent Ria Hebden home.

Ria skated far more on her own whilst Rachel never let her partner go!

Sylvia Wilson, Edinburgh.

Children’s mental health needs care

This week marks Children’s Mental Health Week (7– 13 February). It provides an opportunity to raise awareness of mental health problems and to mobilize efforts in support of mental health.

The rise in mental health problems over recent years has become one of the greatest public health challenges of our times.

In the UK alone one in four people experience problems with mental health, and the social and economic costs of mental ill health amount to billions of pounds every year.

Mental health problems are even more worrying when they concern the mental fitness of our younger generations. Mental health services are inevitably facing an overwhelming and unprecedented pressure, which existed even before the Covid-19 pandemic. This could potentially lead to a lost generation of vulnerable children and young people who are missing out on the support they vitally need.

This year’s theme for Children’s Mental Health Week is ‘Growing Together’.

Kenny Graham, Lynn Bell, Stephen McGhee, Niall Kelly, The Scottish Children’s Services Coalition, Edinburgh.

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