Summary
Report, together with formal minutes relating to the report.
Content
Three years after the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Department of Health and Social Care (the Department) has spent £14.9 billion of public money overpaying and over ordering significant volumes of Personal Protective Equipment (PPE), COVID-19 medicines and vaccines. The Department will never use a significant proportion of the PPE purchased, which will end up being burnt at a significant cost to the taxpayer. The PPE storage costs remain high and were nearly £200 million in the first 9 months of 2022–23 and the Department estimates that its future storage and disposal costs for unusable PPE will be approximately £319 million.
The UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) became fully operational on 1 October 2021, in the midst of the pandemic. There were significant issues in setting up this new organisation and the Department failed to appropriately support UKHSA during this process. This led to a fundamental absence of governance arrangements and controls. Non-executive directors were not appointed until April 2022 and UKHSA’s financial controls and processes were so poor that the organisation could not prepare auditable accounts for the 2021–22 financial year. This resulted in the Comptroller and Auditor General (C&AG) disclaiming his audit opinions. UKHSA faces a significant challenge implementing strong financial controls and processes and the Department must provide sufficient support and oversight to achieve this.
Over the last few years, there have been repeated governance and financial control failings across the Departmental group leading to a number of qualified accounts. This has undermined Parliamentary accountability and resulted in the Departmental group incurring expenditure without Parliamentary approval. The Department has also been unable to lay its accounts before the summer recess, only just managed to do so before the final statutory deadline. It has not yet got a credible plan to return to laying its accounts before the summer recess. The Department must strengthen its governance and financial controls and set out a clear plan to restore timely accountability across the Departmental group. To do this, the Department must work with NHS England and local auditors to restore timely financial reporting across the NHS.
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