A deal made with Full Support Healthcare, an NHS supplier from Northamptonshire, is said to have resulted in the most wasteful government purchase of the pandemic, with approximately £1.4 billion worth of personal protective equipment (PPE) destroyed or written off, despite being manufactured to the proper standard. The company agreed to a £1.78 billion deal in April 2020 to provide face masks, respirators, eye protection, and aprons, which accounted for 13% of the government’s total spend and is the largest Covid PPE order by a single supplier to date. At least 1.57 billion items of PPE will never be used, and the Department for Health and Social Care (DHSC), responsible for purchasing and delivering Covid PPE, did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
Two UK political parties criticised the contract, with Labour denouncing it as a “staggering waste” and the Liberal Democrats calling it a “colossal misuse of public funds”. This means that nearly £1.4 billion worth of Full Support Healthcare’s PPE will not be used. Such a deal is certain to be the most wasteful of the Covid pandemic.
The supplier was already a specialist manufacturer of PPE before the pandemic, with only 25 employees and annual profits of £800,000. Any profits since the contract was fulfilled are not known because in 2021 the co-directors moved the business offshore in Jersey for privacy reasons, though they and the company continue to pay all UK tax, and have done nothing improper.
The business was set up by Sarah Stoute, who worked as a nurse, and her husband Richard, who became a director of the company. They won two DHSC purchase orders for face masks and other items under an existing arrangement with the NHS, and moved quickly to boost supply as coronavirus took hold in 2019
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