a bbc investigation has found that staff
at the safety watchdog felt they were
leaned on by the government to make
factually incorrect statements about ppe
for nhs staff treating coronavirus
patients
the government has been spending
billions of pounds to replenish stocks
of protective equipment
one company was given a contract to
supply what are called isolation suits
but the firm was not given the correct
safety specification
our special correspondent lucy manning
reports
as coronavirus peaked in hospitals and
care homes
there was a rush to buy more protective
equipment
in the summer we revealed how the
government had wasted 150 million
pounds on masks the nhs couldn't use
now we reveal more isolation suits that
hadn't passed nhs safety tests
and allegations of political pressure to
hide that failure
pest fix the small family-run pest
control firm
won contracts worth hundreds of millions
of pounds to supply ppe to the nhs
the government is being taken to court
to explain why it spent
so much on the isolation suits from pest
fix
bbc news has seen emails that reveal a
behind-the-scenes
battle to prove the protective outfits
were properly tested the hsc
the health and safety executive in june
wrote
that the isolation suits shouldn't be
released to the nhs
because they hadn't been properly tested
to the right standards
it appears the government ordered suits
to be tested as if they were medical
devices
but not for their intended use as ppe
after weeks of delays in august the
suits were eventually retested to a
standard acceptable for use in hospitals
but it appears as the legal action
heated up so
too the political pressure we have been
drawn into the legalities
wrote one health and safety official in
september saying they'd been asked to
provide a statement that pesfix's
products had the right
safety documents this is not factually
correct
the safety regulator wrote documentation
provided did not support the products
there was yet more political pressure
the following day a health and safety
executive official wrote that
various colleagues in the dhsc are
contacting those involved
asking for statements to the effect the
hse assessed the products and they were
compliant
not factually correct the official wrote
again
pest fix itself didn't want it known its
isolation suits were not in hospitals
but sitting in a warehouse
writing in june we do not want it to be
made public knowledge
that ppe from pest fix has not passed
the hse
inspection in a statement the company
said
pesfix delivered these products to the
department of health and social care on
time
and in compliance with their
specification and regulations
after delivery there was some delay
while the product was recategorized as
ppe
and further testing was carried out the
department of health and social care
said
we have been working tirelessly to
deliver ppe throughout the pandemic
with more than 4.7 billion items
delivered so far
and 32 billion items ordered
all ppe products are quality assured and
only distributed
if they are safe to use the government
has been challenged on money wasted in
the rush to get ppe
the problem is we still don't know the
details of around
three billion pounds worth of spending
because the government
hasn't published the details yet lucy
manning bbc news