Swine flu legacy – over-expenditure on unused drugs

1 Jul, 2010 16:13 / Updated 14 years ago

Last year the British government spent almost 1.5 billion pounds to combat swine flu. But when it turned out the scale of the pandemic had been over-estimated, the country was left with a huge stockpile of unused drugs.

Despite this, a new report says the UK’s response to the outbreak was "proportionate and effective".

Mathew Sinclair, a research director at the Taxpayers' Alliance said that “the vast amounts were wasted because some of the contracts didn’t have proper break clauses in them.”