ALL the money wasted on the “abysmal, sleazy” PPE procurement could have been spent instead on maintaining the £20-a-week uplift in Universal Credit, according to a legal campaign group.

The cut is expected to push millions of people across the UK into crisis, with many forced to choose between eating and heating.

It also means the benefit is worth less in real terms in 2021 than it was when it was first introduced in 2013.

The uplift was introduced by the UK Government to help people weather the pandemic and there has been a widespread outcry over its withdrawal at the start of this month.

The Good Law Project’s Jo Maugham hit out at the Government’s priorities.

READ MORE: What difference did the Universal Credit uplift make for those who needed it?

He said: “If the cupboard is bare it is because £8 billion was wasted spending huge sums of money giving contracts overwhelmingly to those with Conservative Party connections, and the losers – as they always are under the Conservative Party – are families in the direst need.”

National Audit figures show aggregate spend on PPE to deal with the pandemic was £12.5bn. Five years’ worth of supply was bought at five times the normal rate due to increased pandemic prices.

However, prices have returned to normal, meaning that the UK Government bought at least four years’ worth of PPE at the inflated rate of £2.5bn per year instead of £0.5bn, according to the Good Law Project.

“The situation is slightly worse than that actually because in addition to spending those super-high prices, we are ‘spaffing’ enormous ongoing sums on storing all the PPE and because we bought it all in a great hurry a lot of it is unusable,” said Maugham.

“We’ve spent around £2bn on unusable PPE and a lot of what we bought has a shelf life shorter than five years so we will never be able to use it. This means that theestimate drawn from National Audit Office figures of £8bn is likely to be conservative.”

He added: “The money wasted on this abysmal, sleazy PPE procurement represents at least two years of additional Universal Credit payment to the poorest families in the country.

“They are the losers while the big winners are donors to the Conservative Party who were the VIP beneficiaries of so much of this spending.”

Maugham pointed out that Westminster’s Public Accounts Committee had also said the £37bn spent on Test and Trace had made no discernible difference in slowing the spread of coronavirus.

“And just as with PPE, there was a VIP lane for Test and Trace bidders and many of them came in because of their political connections to the Conservative Party,” said Maugham.

The Good Law Project has now launched a petition to recover the money “wasted on duff PPE” which has already reached 48,000 signatures, with a target of 50,000.

READ MORE: Voices from the frontline respond to Universal Credit cut

It reads: “Companies shouldn’t be able to walk away with hundreds of millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money when they failed to deliver.

“This money should be in the public purse, not lining the pockets of the well-connected.

“It’s time to put an end to the Covid-19 goldrush.

“Government must conduct a full review of the companies that did not deliver adequate PPE and recover the profits from those who benefitted.”

You can add your name to the petition via the group’s website at goodlawproject.org or directly at https://glplive.org/tsn-ppe-0810