BRITISH BROADCASTING CORPORATION RADIO 4
TRANSCRIPT OF “FILE ON 4” – “UNMASKED: STORIES FROM THE PPE FRONTLINE”
CURRENT AFFAIRS GROUP
TRANSMISSION: Tuesday 9th February 2021 2000 - 2040 REPEAT: Sunday 14th February 2021 1700 - 1740
REPORTER: Phil Kemp PRODUCER: Anna Meisel EDITOR: Gail Champion
PROGRAMME NUMBER: 20VQ6342LH0 - 1 -
THE ATTACHED TRANSCRIPT WAS TYPED FROM A RECORDING AND NOT COPIED FROM AN ORIGINAL SCRIPT. BECAUSE OF THE RISK OF MISHEARING AND THE DIFFICULTY IN SOME CASES OF IDENTIFYING INDIVIDUAL SPEAKERS, THE BBC CANNOT VOUCH FOR ITS COMPLETE ACCURACY.
“FILE ON 4”
Transmission: Tuesday 9th February 2021 Repeat: Sunday 14th February 2021
Producer: Anna Meisel Reporter: Phil Kemp Editor: Gail Champion
ACTUALITY OF BEEPING
HOSSAIN: I’m just getting up for my night shifts that I’ve had to pick up because two of our colleagues have come down with Covid and so now there is a rota gap.
KEMP: This is not the first year in the NHS that Dr Pushpo Babul Hossain was expecting.
HOSSAIN: That means staying up all night, looking after sick patients and wearing PPE for most of the time. So, I shall take you with me on my PPE journey today.
KEMP: It’s late January and she’s working as a junior doctor in a South London hospital, on the Covid wards. As we join her on the night shift, we’re going to hear how vitally important the masks, gowns and gloves the NHS provides are for keeping her safe. Some of this equipment ran dangerously short in the early months of the pandemic. In response, the Government belatedly - and at the top of the market - splurged hundreds of millions on kit that’s not fit for purpose. Tonight, on File on 4, we take you behind the mask on the NHS frontline …. - 2 -
HOSSAIN: It’s just so suffocating and you just sometimes need to open the window and try to stick your head out.
KEMP: … to the factories in Malaysia where many of the gloves used in the NHS are made.
NISH [VIA INTERPRETER]: I am not free. I have to abide by the rules in this country. There are so many rules that you cannot do this, you cannot do that, so we are always under pressure.
KEMP: Do you feel like they’re controlling you then?
NISH [VIA INTERPRETER]: Yes, I do.
KEMP: This is the story of the UK Government’s desperate £12 billion scramble to kit out the NHS for Covid - and the tens of millions of items of PPE bought at taxpayers’ expense that now can’t be used as planned.
REEVES: It’s pretty devastating for those who work on the frontline, and to know so much money is being wasted when it could have been invested in our frontline services.
EXTRACT FROM ‘TODAY’
NEWSREADER: It’s 7 o’clock on Monday 25th January. The headlines this morning. Senior Conservative MPs ….
HOSSAIN: All right, I’ve just gotten up and I’ve looked at the news today. It says that 1,800 plus people have lost their lives to Covid according to national figures. Gosh, so difficult and so sad.
KEMP: Dr Hossain’s PPE routine is quite a bit more involved than the one that we’re used to, wearing a mask to go shopping. She agreed to record her
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KEMP cont: experience for us in her capacity as a member of the campaign group, the Doctors Association UK.
ACTUALITY IN HOSPITAL
HOSSAIN: Okay, so now we’re going to enter into the red zone.
WOMAN: Alison, we’re going to go to the south side, bed number 43.
KEMP: Our masks are designed to stop us passing on the virus to other people. Dr Hossain’s PPE is designed to protect her from getting infected.
HOSSAIN: We have multi-layered PPE, just have the coat or the top. It comes in a plastic package, just remove the package right now.
KEMP: Dr Hossain says there was never any problem with supplies where she worked. She still fell ill though.
HOSSAIN: I caught Covid in the first wave and I followed all the Covid PPE guidelines. You know, all the PPE that I had couldn’t stop me from getting Covid. I felt really sad and scared for the people who were saying that they did not have PPE, because it’s such a terrible disease, it’s very scary.
KEMP: Nearly a year ago now, newspapers reported the Prime Minister had put British industry on a war footing to deliver the equipment that was needed. Where the Government would normally advertise contracts and invite bids, they started to award them directly without opening them to competition. But some worry that meant trusted suppliers got overlooked.
ACTUALITY AT ARCO
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EVISON: ARCO INTRO: Arco is a family-owned business. We started trading in 1884, so we have over 130 years’ experience, predominantly within the health and safety industry.
KEMP: The forklifts at PPE distributor, Arco, shift thousands of boxes a day at its huge warehouse in Hull. The company chartered dozens of flights last year to make sure supplies kept coming for its existing private clients and individual NHS hospitals - but they failed to land any major Government contracts, unlike other, less experienced firms. There’s a vigorous regime of checks in place to make sure that PPE meets the correct standards and that it comes with the right supporting certification to prove it. So, Arco’s managing director, David Evison, was surprised when newcomers to the market, who didn’t seem to understand how tightly regulated the market is, started to offer him equipment.
EVISON: So, there’s some suppliers that we looked at, that the certificates were not genuine, or they’d come from test houses that weren’t accredited and right to do that. It’s a bit like an MOT for a car, you need to rely on somebody doing the job properly, to show that those products were intended to do the right thing.
KEMP: Why is it important that you get the right documentation and that you can trust the certificates that suppliers are presenting for their PPE?
EVISON: Because ultimately that is what is keeping people safe, both colleagues and people working on the frontline. A simple way to do it, if you drop a brick on a steel toe cap boot, how do you know it’s going to protect your toes? You rely on the certification, and the certification means that that product should have been tested in the right conditions, under the right weights to make sure they can keep colleagues safe.
KEMP: The certificates that David Evison is talking about can’t be issued by just anybody. They have to come from so-called notified bodies or test houses around Europe, whose job it is to check the PPE meets the necessary requirements before being sold around the EU. But last year, Alan Murray, Chief Executive of the industry body the British Safety Industry Federation, says that like Arco, they were seeing a new breed of certificates circulating - from test houses that weren’t accredited to assess PPE. - 5 -
MURRAY: The first examples we saw, Phil, were from an Italian test house, and it was quite specific on the certificates themselves, that they were voluntary, but people who were not used to seeing these things could be easily misled.
KEMP: What did it mean, then, the fact that they were called voluntary certificates?
MURRAY: Well, they were meaningless and they were worthless.
KEMP: Were you seeing many of those kinds of documents?
MURRAY: To give it context, we reported 300 products or traders who were doing similar things with products, so that’s a very large scale, I would say.
KEMP: I first heard about the problem with these certificates last summer. What I didn’t know at the time was whether it affected any of the large PPE contracts the Department of Health had signed, and that’s because the Government has been slow to publish them. But over the past few months, there’s been a steady drip-drip of more information being released, and what that’s revealed is that several deals were done to supply the NHS with PPE supported by these worthless certificates - including one worth £116 million for face shields.
EXTRACT FROM BBC RADIO GLOUCESTERSHIRE
PRESENTER: BBC Radio Gloucestershire, it’s your afternoon show then, through until 6 o’clock. We’re the BBC news for the county. Here’s Esme.
ESME: The Government is under pressure to review its PPE deals after a Conservative councillor in Stroud received a major contract. Steve Dechan’s company …
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KEMP: It’s already had a bit of publicity, because the company involved, P14 Medical, is run by Steve Dechan, who was a Conservative party town councillor when the deal was signed.
EXTRACT FROM NEWS INTERVIEW
DECHAN: We’re an NHS supply chain supplier and that is a very, very high bar to achieve and we’ve been doing that for years. We have to be careful here to say that small firms can’t do big things.
KEMP: But last summer he told the BBC his politics had nothing to do with him winning the contract. He’s since stood down from the council.
DECHAN: You do it as a volunteering job. You don’t suddenly get a speed dial to your party HQ or something. So that is just nonsense.
ACTUALITY OF VIDEO CALL
KEMP: I’m going to try and share this document now - let me know if you can see it. Over a video call, I showed the certificate we’d found from P14 Medical’s contract to Alan Murray from the British Safety Industry Federation. So, is this one of those worthless documents you’re talking about?
MURRAY: Within the context of the Personal Protective Equipment regulation, this is not worth anything.
KEMP: P14 Medical told us they had supplied the NHS for almost a decade and all their PPE was fully compliant with all relevant regulatory requirements. We found several other suppliers, whose multi-million pound contracts featured these certificates. What’s your reaction to the fact that suppliers were winning contracts on the basis of certificates like these?
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MURRAY: Well, I mean, I am disappointed, but in the context of the shortages, there is an element of understanding why product was being brought in and then examined before being released.
KEMP: Are you confident that that was always the case, that these products would have been checked before being sent out to the frontline?
MURRAY: I have to be honest and say I remain optimistic that that’s what happened, but I cannot be sure.
KEMP: The Department of Health said all PPE products are quality assured and only distributed if they meet the relevant standards. But File on 4 has discovered that, in at least one case, officials had to step in and stop protective equipment being used after it was sent out to the frontline.
EXTRACT FROM NEWS AT 10
NEWSREADER: Also tonight, the Spanish businessman paid over £20 million of British taxpayers’ money for his role in securing protective garments for the NHS.
KEMP: Last November, the BBC laid bare the staggering amounts of cash involved in one set of contracts the Government had signed with a US supplier of PPE. A Spanish businessman acting as a go-between had been paid millions of pounds by the supplier, Saiger LLC, for his help with ‘procurement, logistics, due diligence, product sourcing and quality control’ of the kit. In effect he was expected to find a manufacturer for deals that had already been done.
EXTRACT FROM PRIME MINISTER’S QUESTIONS
SPEAKER: Keir Starmer.
STARMER: Mr Speaker, the Prime Minister must understand there’s a huge gap … - 8 -
KEMP: It caused such a row, the Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer, raised it at Prime Minister’s Questions.
STARMER: We learned this week they can find £21 million of taxpayers’ money to pay a go-between to deliver lucrative contracts to the Department of Health. £21 million. I remind the Prime Minister that a few weeks ago he couldn’t find that amount of money for free school meals for kids over half term.
KEMP: But the story didn’t end there. Saiger then won further contracts to supply the NHS, including one worth £70 million for 10 million sterile surgical gowns.
MUSIC
KEMP: File on 4 can now reveal, after just 100,000 of these had been distributed, their use was suspended after infection prevention and control experts said they should be double wrapped if they were to be used in sterile care settings like operating theatres. The Saiger gowns were only single wrapped. It’s emerged because the Government’s decision to award the contract is being challenged in the courts by the campaigning organisation, the Good Law Project. Its director is Jolyon Maugham.
MAUGHAM: We’ve spent this vast amount of money on sterile gowns that can’t be used as sterile gowns. I mean, it’s just, it’s remarkable. And my concern really is that this is not an isolated incident. Every single contract that Good Law Project has looked at have involved supply of PPE which appears not to be able to be used for its intended purpose. Government, when spending £12.5 billion on PPE, really itself needs to know what it’s buying. It should be buying from those who are experienced in the complicated business of supplying medical quality PPE, and it also needs to be keeping a careful check on the prices it is paying, so that intermediaries aren’t able to make tens and tens of millions of dollars at public expense.
MUSIC
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KEMP: We asked the Department of Health why it had spent £70 million on 10 million gowns that hospital infection experts later said shouldn’t be used as intended. It’s not clear whether they can be used in other ways. A spokesman said they didn’t provide a running commentary on the details of individual contracts. The Government’s legal response to the Good Law Project, though, does confirm there was no specific requirement for Saiger to supply the gowns single or double wrapped in either the published technical specifications or in the terms and conditions of its contract. It adds that sterile gowns aren’t generally used on Covid wards, but they had been used because of the shortage of PPE. It says supply is suspended until they had resolved the query over their wrapping. Saiger told us the Government could not have been clearer they had delivered goods in accordance with the contracts and to the technical specifications requested, that they delivered them on time, and at good value. This isn’t the only example of the Government buying costly PPE, only to decide it shouldn’t be used as planned.
ACTUALITY IN HOSPITAL
HOSSAIN: So, I’m putting on one of these FFP3 masks. They’re usually very, very tight and quite difficult to wear, in fact.
KEMP: FFP3s, or filtering face pieces, are some of the most important kit on the Covid frontline. If you’ve seen any news items from intensive care units, you’ll have spotted them. They sometimes come with a valve on the front and are fitted around the head by elastic straps.
HOSSAIN: You have to press it down on your nose so it forms a tight fit.
KEMP: If you’re a doctor or nurse working on any surgical procedures where virus particles could get transmitted through the air, it’s FFP3s that have to be worn.
HOSSAIN: Sometimes you have to wear them for a twelve hour shift straight and it gets really, really suffocating inside.
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MUSIC
KEMP: Last April, the Government was struggling to secure sufficient supplies, but what they knew they could get more easily was masks that came with ear loops, rather than the tighter-fitting head harnesses that FFP3s use. Officials placed orders for many millions of these masks, but after talking to the regulator, they decided they shouldn’t be used in the NHS because of concerns that they would not fit tightly enough to protect staff. Many of the masks with ear loops that suppliers were offering at this time were a Chinese type known as KN95. We found four contracts, adding up to tens of millions of pounds, that the Government signed for KN95s last year. None of them can now be used as PPE by frontline clinicians fighting the coronavirus pandemic.
MURRAY: They were the most commonly available product out of China during the height of the shortages, but they are not compliant with our regulations.
KEMP: This is Alan Murray again, from the British Safety Industry Federation.
MURRAY: They’re a different standard, and ultimately the HSE produced a safety alert, informing the marketplace that these were not to be used in the context of Covid-19. Unless they can be repurposed for something else, that’s a waste of money.
MUSIC
KEMP: Documents released to File on 4 by the safety watchdog show a catalogue of concerns about masks with ear loops that they were asked to review last year. One of the most extraordinary relates to equipment supplied by Pestfix, a Sussex-based company that originally specialised in pest control. Last April, the small family firm was awarded contracts worth £350 million after it was mistakenly placed on a high-priority lane reserved for leads for PPE offers coming from ministers’ offices or Government officials. File on 4 can reveal that, because of testing failures, 17 million FFP3 masks that Pestfix supplied will now not be used as intended - perhaps not surprisingly, given they came with ear loops rather than head harnesses. As an alternative, the firm later offered - 11 -
KEMP cont: a sample of twenty prototype masks. A document released to File on 4 under the Freedom of Information by the safety watchdog revealed these came with head straps that snapped when being fitted and nosebands fell off nearly all samples tested. Pestfix told us the Department of Health did not proceed with this product.
HOSSAIN: I’ve just come to the mess and opened a window, it seems like there is no one around so I’m just going to try and take off my mask, because it’s just so suffocating. I think the FFP3 masks make me quite breathless.
KEMP: You can hear from Dr Hossain how tightly these masks have to fit - wearers have to have them specially fitted by trained experts, so they’re unlikely to pass unless they fit around the head with straps. Pestfix told us they were proud of their role, sourcing PPE from Chinese manufacturers with 94% of the 282 million items they supplied meeting standards. They said they were working with the Government and the Chinese manufacturers responsible for the small percentage of items that didn’t enter the NHS supply chain to ensure the best possible result for taxpayers. We asked the Department of Health why it had bought so many of these masks with ear loops without knowing whether the regulator would ever approve them. We also asked what had happened to them now they couldn’t be used as intended, and if the Government had got any money back on behalf of taxpayers. No one would be interviewed for the programme, but in a statement a spokesman said they had worked tirelessly to deliver PPE to protect health and social care staff on the frontline, with over 7.6 billion PPE items delivered so far.
REEVES: It’s a huge waste of taxpayers’ money that millions of pounds has been spent on PPE which is essentially unusable.
KEMP: Rachel Reeves is the shadow cabinet minister for Labour.
REEVES: We’ve seen too many deals where what comes back, the PPE that comes back, is not good enough for our NHS workers, and that’s why I think in the end, this area of procurement is one of the ways in which this Government has really let people down - particularly our frontline workers - during the course of the pandemic.
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KEMP: What do you think needs to happen as a result of it all?
REEVES: I believe that there should be an inquiry, a rapid review right now into the lessons that we can learn, because if we learn lessons, we can save lives - and this virus isn’t going away. And I believe that if the Government get on and do that review, then we will be in a better position to withstand future challenges in the NHS and in our society more generally.
HOSSAIN: As much as it’s a faff wearing this PPE, it’s equally difficult taking it off.
KEMP: The vast majority of the billions of items of PPE the Government bought for doctors like Pushpo Hossain are safe and usable.
HOSSAIN: Then you try to pull one of your gloves using one of your other hands that’s already in the gown …
KEMP: But how protected are the migrant workers we rely on to make them?
ACTUALITY IN MALAYSIA RUBBER PLANTATION
KEMP: Malaysia’s hot and wet climate makes it one of the world’s largest producers of rubber, which is farmed on plantations up in the mountains. It’s a country that’s heavily reliant on migrant labour from places like Nepal and Bangladesh, and the industry has been dogged by claims of exploitation. Since before the pandemic, the Department of Health has had a contract for the supply of gloves with Supermax Healthcare Limited, the UK subsidiary of a Malaysian manufacturer. Last year, the government upped its order to £366 million because of Covid. We wanted to get an idea of what conditions have been like for the Supermax workers making PPE to protect British medics.
ENGINEER: Yeah, we’re recording in the studio, so we’re ready to go.
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KEMP: So, we asked our colleague, Gani Ansari, from the BBC Nepalese service, for help in contacting them. Gani, thank you so much for making these calls for us. What did they tell you about the hours that they were working?
ANSARI: Well, up until three months ago, they used to work for 29 days a month, and 12 hours a day.
KEMP: So, hang on, so you’ve spoken to workers who, up until quite recently, were working 12 hours a day, 29 days a month, so one or two days off in a whole month?
ANSARI: Yeah.
KEMP: I mean, they must be exhausted.
ANSARI: Exactly. They told me that it is really hard to wake up in the morning. All of the workers I talked to told me that it is like a prison. They have not been able to go out of the company premises since January 2020, and one worker told me that he don’t know how the Malaysia look like, because he has not been able to go out of the company premises.
KEMP: So, they live and work on the same site and they’ve not left that place for a year?
ANSARI: Yeah, their hostel is inside the company premises.
KEMP: That’s shocking, that’s shocking.
MUSIC
KEMP: We put what Gani had heard to Supermax. They denied these claims. They told us it would be ‘suicidal’ for them to mistreat any worker and said their working hours followed Malaysian law. They admitted that three months ago, - 14 -
KEMP cont: because of the surge in demand for PPE, they had requested that workers to do extra days, but they said workers consented to it and they had been adequately compensated. They added that their staff’s movements had been restricted in line with measures imposed by governments around the world and that they had brought market traders and banking facilities to workers so they didn’t have to make unprotected visits to town. This ought to be commended, they said, rather than turned into an issue. Existing suppliers like Supermax couldn’t supply all the gloves that the NHS needed, so the Department of Health had to sign new contracts with intermediaries, who in turn subcontracted to additional suppliers in Malaysia and elsewhere. And unlike other PPE contracts we’ve seen, some of these included anti-slavery clauses designed to stop the kind of labour practices we’d heard Supermax accused of. But did it work? With the help of a Bengali-speaking colleague, we decided to find out. Could you ask to start with, tell us where are you from?
GUPTA: [Speaking Bengali]
KEMP: The voice you can hear is our colleague, Pulak Gupta, translating for us. The worker we spoke to asked us not to use his real name, so we’ve called him Nish. Nish works for the world’s largest glove maker. He’s been there for a couple of years and hasn’t been home to Bangladesh once in that time. He works 12 hours a day, six days a week in the blazing heat of the factory. For that, he earns the equivalent of around £340 a month. But to even get the job, he had to pay out ten times that in upfront fees.
NISH [VIA INTERPRETER]: I came to Malaysia through an agent and I had to pay about 400,000 Taka in Bangladeshi currency to get this job. I come from a very ordinary family and I had to manage from friends and other people.
KEMP: This is common across Malaysia and one of the indicators of what has come to be known as modern slavery. Workers are effectively tied into their jobs in order to pay off their debts, something that is a known concern and has been highlighted to western governments in the past. Nish’s employer is called Top Glove. Last July, the US Government banned imports from two of the firm’s subsidiaries, saying extensive reporting had documented the existence of forced labour in the rubber glove industry in Malaysia. It appears the British Government also knew about this. In November - 15 -
KEMP cont: 2019, a Home Office commissioned report found strong evidence that Malaysian glove manufacturers used forced labour. The report even specifically cites a 2018 investigation of Top Glove carried out by a migrant rights activist, which accused them of ‘abusive labour conditions’. A month earlier, NHS Supply had written to providers, asking them to provide reassurances that none of the gloves they sold into the NHS came from Top Glove. So, did the Government stand firm against alleged modern slavery once the pandemic hit? Has the work been harder generally over the last year because of the pandemic?
NISH [VIA INTERPRETER]: The machines I work with, it is like an assembly line and if there is a mistake, the machine could cut off limbs, you know, hand or leg, so it is risky work, and these days, because of the pandemic, lots of people are not coming to work, so we are having to do two people’s work. So, the work is actually much harder now.
KEMP: Have you ever seen any accidents like that at work?
NISH [VIA INTERPRETER]: I have seen accidents like this. The last accident happened about a year ago. One of my colleagues was working with a conveyor belt and the conveyor belt suddenly was torn, split, and then he was trying to repair it and then something happened. He lost one arm and it was cut off by the machine.
KEMP: File on 4 has been shown graphic images of accidents in Top Glove factories. In one video, a worker collides with a forklift, leaving them with a bloody gouge around their ankle. A separate incident report records how a worker lost his hand when his glove got caught in the rotating shaft of a washing tank. Covid, though, has brought with it new risks - and not just at work. Can I ask about your accommodation, how many people you share your room with?
NISH [VIA INTERPRETER]: In each room, there are thirty people living in one single room.
EXTRACT FROM VIDEO
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KEMP: In a recent video we’ve been shown, dozens of workers can also be seen crammed together in the canteen. They shout, ‘Not enough, food not provided.’ Some have their faces covered, others wear masks hanging below their chins. Little wonder then that Top Glove has reported a series of Covid outbreaks at its factories. A PPE manufacturer unable to protect its staff from infection. I asked Nish how protected he felt at work from Covid.
NISH [VIA INTERPRETER]: I have come to another country. It is not Bangladesh. I am not free. I have to abide by the rules in this country. I just have to accept and carry on.
KEMP: You said that you’re not free. What did you mean by that?
NISH [VIA INTERPRETER]: When I’m outside the factory, I can see the factory police roaming around and keeping an eye on where the workers are going or what they are doing outside, and there are so many rules, that you cannot do this and you cannot do that, so we are always under pressure.
KEMP: Do you feel like they’re controlling you then?
NISH [VIA INTERPRETER]: Yes, I do.
KEMP: Top Glove told us an independent audit had cleared them of eleven forced labour indicators, except for one item on workers’ accommodation, which they said was a work in progress. They said new accommodation was planned for this year and next, but that in the meantime some workers had been relocated to another hostel. Top Glove operates a zero-cost recruitment policy, they said, and those who have paid fees are being reimbursed. They added that they had always been swift to respond to workplace accidents. [MUSIC] The Department of Health and Social Care doesn’t work directly with Top Glove, and it’s not always easy to find the names of manufacturers in the emergency contracts signed last year, because so much detail is redacted. But there is one deal signed last June for £47 million - and you have to scroll through to the very last page of the contract to find it. But there, in a list of annexes and appendices, it mentions gloves from Top Glove.
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KEMP cont: Although the PPE looks like it comes from Top Glove, the firm that signed the contract to supply it is called Unispace Global Ltd.
EXTRACT FROM PROMOTIONAL VIDEO
PRESENTER: The way we work has changed, which is why we believe it’s time to turn the traditional model for workplace design upside down
KEMP: The company was incorporated in 2011 and is headquartered near St Katherine Docks in London.
PRESENTER 2: At Unispace, we’re all here for just one thing: to help your business achieve its vision for the way it wants to work.
KEMP: According to its most recent accounts, its principal activity is business and commercial interior design. We put the claims we had heard about the treatment of Top Glove workers to them, but they didn’t respond.
REEVES: It makes me really angry to hear the stories that you’re telling and what you have uncovered.
KEMP: Rachel Reeves is the Labour Party’s shadow cabinet minister.
REEVES: No taxpayers’ money should be going to companies that employ essentially slave labour or that abuse their workforce. And I do understand that at the peak of the pandemic, Government had to act swiftly. But that doesn’t excuse using companies, including companies that the NHS have said shouldn’t be involved in anything to do with our National Health Service. We wouldn’t tolerate that sort of abuse of workers in this country and we shouldn’t tolerate it abroad either, and no one wants to think that their hard-earned money that they pay in taxes is going to reward people who benefit from slave labour. And the Government should have better checks and balances in place to ensure that they are not. - 18 -
KEMP: The Department of Health told us they take any allegations of labour abuse in their supply chains very seriously and said guidance was in place for all Government departments on how to identify and mitigate any potential risks in relation to procurement. ‘We have been dealing with an unprecedented global pandemic,’ they said, ‘and we needed to procure contracts with extreme urgency to secure the vital supplies required to protect NHS workers and the public.’
MUSIC
HOSSAIN: Okay, so I’ve just come back after finishing a long day and just feel so tired, all the running around and all the change of PPE.
KEMP: It’s the end of Dr Pushpo Hossain’s shift covering for her sick colleagues - twelve hours on the Covid frontline. And on her birthday too.
HOSSAIN: We have adequate amount of PPE in the Trust that I work thankfully. However, in the first wave, I did read news about Trusts not having PPE and that was really scary. It made me feel really grateful that I was not working in those areas, because I cannot imagine how scared the people working in those Trusts may feel.
KEMP: As the NHS approaches its second spring battling Covid, the PPE shortages suffered last year look like they are now, thankfully, behind us. But stockpiles could have been even more secure if money had not been wasted on kit that’s not fit for purpose and if the right checks had been done before it was bought at such a huge cost. The Prime Minister has promised a public inquiry into the Government’s handling of the pandemic. The story of how it secured PPE supplies suggests there could be many lessons to learn.