When the pandemic hit, Britain was caught off guard.

We are putting not just our residents at risk, but also our staff.

There was just two weeks worth of PPE left to kit out the NHS.

We want to treat patients and we never expected that we were putting our own health

at risk by doing that.

Austerity had depleted government stockpiles.

We are trying to do everything we can to get the equipment that we need.

There is a great deal of demand for it.

Amid desperate shortages, a mad scramble for contracts began,

just as prices around the world were peeking.

A Spanish businessman was paid more than 20 million pounds of British contracts worth up to

299 million pounds.

The government paid 10 billion pounds more than they needed to to buy emergency

P. P. According to an official report. Did cronyism blight Britain's

pandemic response.

Well, we're very polite, aren't we?

If we were in another country, we wouldn't be talking about corruption.

You're listening to stories of our times from the Times and the Sunday Times.

I'm Manvin Rana.

Today, the Chumocracy. For months now, there's been a constant drip, drip, of revelations about eye- PPE contracts and friends of ministers who've been

given key roles in managing the pandemic. But even the keenest Whitehall watchers was shocked when the National Audit Office published

a damning report last week showing the true extent of the problem.

...