Bill included paying defence firm Babcock £30m even though no machines were bought from the company
Ministers have written off more than £140m that was spent on developing ventilators that were never put into use in the NHS in the months following the start of the Covid crisis, the Observer can disclose.
The plan to create new, domestically produced ventilators was unveiled at the start of the pandemic. The prime minister is said to have called the project “Operation Last Gasp”. However, cabinet office accounts published last week reveal that “constructive losses” from the so-called “ventilator challenge” programme amounted to some £143m. The losses are referred to in a section documenting “write-offs of unrecoverable debts and fruitless payments”. It also states that £6m was written off by the department on machines to manufacture face-coverings.
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