Not a waste at all. That money went into the pockets of very many friends of the Conservative party, and getting money into the pockets of the friends of the Conservative party is one of the main aims of the Conservative party.

This is the best summary I could come up with:

Ministers have been accused of throwing away taxpayers’ money “as if it were confetti” after official figures revealed that the government wasted nearly £10bn on defective or unusable personal protective equipment during the Covid crisis.

Annual accounts for the Department of Health and Social Care published on Thursday show that nearly three-quarters of the money it spent on PPE during the pandemic has been written off.

The figures come as the National Crime Agency investigates allegations of bribery and fraud in the awarding of PPE contracts.

Billions of pounds of taxpayers’ money has been poured down the drain because of this Conservative government’s incompetence.

To rub salt in the wound, some of this money was wasted on dodgy contracts with Conservative cronies, the vast majority of which has still not been recovered.

“The costs as a result increased significantly and the government took the decision very transparently to do everything possible to secure protective equipment for frontline health and care workers.

The original article contains 420 words, the summary contains 161 words. Saved 62%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

Correction: UK government wasted another £10bn of taxpayer money fraudulently awarding contracts to themselves and their party donors.

Yes but they can as dropping it off Europe saved that many billions for the NHS.

... Right?

That could have saved several third world countries, especially people in healthcare.

I don't know the details, but a lot of comments are suggesting tories paying off their mates. It's probably true, but also in this case being too prepared doesn't seem like the worst thing? If they didn't spend enough and it would also be an outrage. Still, fuck the tories