Hastily procured PPE equipment worth £4bn which tuned out to be unusable by the NHS is set to be burned, a report by the a report by the Commons public accounts committee (PAC) has revealed.

Two commercial waste firms will help dispose of 15,000 pallets a month “via a combination of recycling and burning to generate power”.

Dame Meg Hillier, the PAC chair, said: “In a desperate bid to catch up, the government splurged huge amounts of money, paying obscenely inflated prices and payments to middlemen in a chaotic rush during which they chucked out even the most cursory due diligence.

“This has left us with massive public contracts now under investigation by the National Crime Agency or in dispute because of allegations of modern slavery in the supply chain.”

A DHSC review of the 364 PPE contracts it signed found that 176 (48%) were questionable. Of those, 24% are either under commercial renegotiation, legal review or in mediation. The PAC criticised the department’s “haphazard purchasing strategy”.

Dr Chaand Nagpaul, the chair of council at the British Medical Association, said:

“The deadly mismanagement around the supply of PPE is one of the greatest failings of this Government’s handling of the pandemic.”