Taxpayers are paying about £3.2million a 12 months to cowl the price of storing tens of millions of “sterile gowns” purchased from a agency linked to Tory peer Baroness Mone, a courtroom heard.
The robes have been purchased by the Government through the Covid-19 pandemic and at the moment are on the centre of a High Court case, a High Court choose has been informed. Lawyers representing Health and Social Care Secretary Victoria Atkins indicated that the whole storage invoice had topped £10 million.
Mr Justice Bright was given figures whereas overseeing a pre-trial listening to in a £130 million damages dispute centred on the availability of private protecting gear through the pandemic.
The Government has sued PPE Medpro – the agency which equipped the robes and is preventing the case. Reports have urged Baroness Mone and her husband Douglas Barrowman have profited from the agency profitable contracts price greater than £200 million. The pair deny all wrongdoing.
Barrister Paul Stanley KC, who led the Health Secretary’s authorized workforce, informed Mr Justice Bright that underneath a contract agreed in June 2020, PPE Medpro would promote the well being division “25 million sterile gowns”. But the robes, which have been “manufactured and sterilised” in China, have been “not sterile when delivered”. Mr Stanley mentioned the well being division had examined a “sample of gowns” and informed the choose: “They failed dismally.”
Mr Stanley mentioned PPE Medpro was suggesting that the robes examined have been “contaminated on the journey from China”, or “while stored in the UK”, or that “the testing was not done properly”.
He added that: “The Department of Health and Social Care is naturally keen to begin orderly disposal of the gowns, both to mitigate its loss and minimise ongoing cost to the taxpayer. But it recognises that it must do that in a manner that is consistent with its obligation to ensure the fair determination of its claim.”
Mr Stanley indicated {that a} choose would most likely hear proof at trial lasting greater than two weeks.