Britain pays China £23m a year to store PPE used by healthcare workers in units and warehouses

Tons of personal protective equipment (PPE) for UK healthcare workers are being stockpiled by China at a cost of £23m a year, The Mail on Sunday can reveal.

And the taxpayer bill has nearly doubled in a year, prompting Sir Iain Duncan Smith, the former leader of the Conservative Party, to castigate it as ‘unbelievable’.

In the first year of the pandemic, the government paid China £12m to stockpile PPE, which rose to £23m in 2021-22, Health Minister Maria Caulfield has revealed in a response to Labour’s shadow health secretary Wes Streeting.

Sir Iain said: “We are becoming dependent on China both for PPE production and now for storage. We support them with extra money, so we stupidly build the threat that will hurt us one day.

He said the next Prime Minister must ensure that “in all departments, stupidity like this is stamped out”. We don’t need to become ever more dependent on China”.

The government has 2.4 billion items of PPE, with an estimated value of over £1 billion, stored in units and warehouses in China.

Earlier this month, Ms Caulfield said the current cost of storing PPE in China was £571,742 per week.

The government has 2.4 billion items of PPE, with an estimated value of over £1 billion, stored in units and warehouses in China. NHS workers are pictured above in PPE in April 2020

Mr Streeting told the Mail on Sunday: ‘The Conservative government pays China more every week to store our PPE than Man Utd spends on Cristiano Ronaldo’s salary.

“If the Conservatives weren’t burning through taxpayers’ money with such negligence, they wouldn’t have to raise taxes on working people during a cost of living crisis.”

The total cost of storing PPE, including in the UK, was £267m last year, compared to £168m spent in the first year of the pandemic.

Asked why China was stockpiling Britain’s PPE and why that cost has doubled year on year, the Department of Health declined to answer.