Express & Star

LETTER: We can’t afford to keep on wasting so much money

A reader believes the a lot of the UK debt is due to government failings.

Published
PPE equipment is flown in

The UK now owes trillions of pounds and cannot blame it all on the Covid crisis. Millions of pounds have been spent on the failure of government to ensure the PPE purchased from China, Turkey etc. conformed to the standard required by the NHS and so putting the billions of nurses, doctors etc. at grave risk. To date no one in government has been held responsible – totally unacceptable!

Now we are told that future years of suffering will pale into insignificance compared to all the years of austerity that we have experienced.

Over the past 12 months, well before the arrival of the virus, UK borrowing was £62 billion. Surely it is time for UK foreign aid to be stopped and replaced by UK aid. This would release around £15 billion for use in our own country. Also, why do we now not drop the HS2 project, which at the present is estimated at £110 billion and will now soar to billions extra by completion date?

The NHS has, over the past year, spent £160 million on foreign health tourists, not a penny has been recovered and the total increases year after year. The blame lies with the managers of the vast majority of NHS trusts refusing to comply with the government’s instruction to ensure all treatment would be paid for before commencing any surgery etc.

There are many other examples of waste of taxpayers’ money I am sure, and instant action is necessary.

R Saunders, Walsall