“File on 4” – “Unmasked: Stories from the Ppe Frontline”
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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 - 3 - 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 - 4 - 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 … - 6 - 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.