"But Cockerill's 87-page judgment also offered an intriguing glimpse into another company whose contracts, with a combined value of 1.4bn, dwarfed the PPE Medpro deals, a firm so much less well-known that even a politician involved in the deals could not remember its name. To people familiar with the frantic multibillion pound spending of public money and the VIP lane for politically connected companies seeking PPE contracts, it was jolting that Cockerill found this firm was also at fault in the supply of unusable PPE."
"The DHSC commissioned Uniserve early in the pandemic to transport ventilators to the UK, which developed into a freight contract for bringing PPE from China, and ultimately ran from 31 March 2020 through to December 2021, paying the company 573m. Uniserve is a well-established logistics company based in Upminster. Photograph: MediaWorldImages/Alamy Liddell moved quickly into offering to supply PPE directly and Uniserve was awarded seven contracts worth 304m, processed through the VIP lane."
Mrs Justice Cockerill found PPE Medpro supplied unsafe personal protective equipment and ordered repayment of 122m to the Department of Health and Social Care for unusable gowns bought in summer 2020. The judgment identified Uniserve as a much larger contractor with combined Covid contracts of about 1.4bn. Uniserve, a logistics firm based in Upminster owned by Iain Liddell, won a 573m freight contract to import PPE from China and then offered direct supply, securing seven VIP-lane contracts worth 304m. Cockerill found Uniserve also at fault for supplying unusable PPE during the pandemic.
Read at www.theguardian.com
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