0h 6min, jul 14, 2026 y - COVID Inquiry: Govt. wasted £10bn

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Boris Johnson’s government wasted £10bn of public money because of the flawed way it went about buying personal protective equipment during the coronavirus pandemic, an official inquiry has concluded.

The Covid-19 inquiry chair, Heather Hallett, also criticised the then Conservative government’s controversial “VIP lane”, which gave high priority for PPE contracts to companies with political connections to the Tories.

The most high-profile scandal of the VIP lane contracts was PPE Medpro, a newly formed company linked to the then Conservative peer Michelle Mone, which was awarded two contracts worth £203m after Mone first approached Michael Gove, the then Cabinet Office minister, in May 2020.

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