British taxpayers will pay for a decade pandemic

British taxpayers will bear the cost of the COVID-19 pandemic for decades. This emerges from two reports from the British Parliament's Public Accounts Committee, according to which the British government's response to the coronary crisis exposed taxpayers in the United Kingdom to "significant financial risks". MEPs also criticized government spending on unusable protective equipment. The BBC news portal informs about it. The committee said in supra-party reports it published on Sunday that the estimated amount for government pandemic measures had already reached £ 372 billion in May. As one example of the future costs of the pandemic, MEPs said that out of a total of £ 92 billion in loans guaranteed by the government, taxpayers could guarantee bad loans worth an estimated £ 26 billion. MEPs also expressed concern that, despite spending more than £ 10 billion on personal protective equipment, "stocks are not suitable for this purpose". Of the 32 billion items of personal protective equipment ordered by the Department of Health, 11 billion have been distributed, according to the committee, and 12.6 billion more are stored in the United Kingdom as central stock. However, some 8.4 billion items ordered from other countries have not yet reached the UK. According to MEPs, storage alone costs around £ 6.7 million a week, with potential waste levels being "unacceptably high". According to the report, 10,000 containers of personal protective equipment still had to be unpacked by May of this year, and it has already been decided that 2.1 billion of these devices are unusable in the medical environment. That, according to the committee, represents more than £ 2 billion in taxpayers' money. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has pledged to conduct an independent public inquiry into the government's action during the pandemic. It is expected to start in the spring of 2022.