The government says it will use the fires to generate power - but a spending watchdog has attacked the cost and environmental impact of the plan.

The Public Accounts Committee said some of the £4bn worth of unused PPE did not meet NHS standards.

The Department of Health (DoH) said the committee's claims were "misleading".

A spokesman said: "We make no apology for procuring too much PPE rather than too little, and only 3% of the PPE we procured was unusable in any context."

The report by the Public Accounts Committee - which scrutinises government spending - said that between 2020-21, the Department of Health spent £12bn on PPE, but £8.7bn had to be written off.

At the start of the pandemic, countries around the world were clamouring for PPE which sent prices soaring.

The DoH has argued that it was better to purchase PPE despite the "globally inflated market" rather than risk running out of equipment.

A total of £4.7bn was written off because the market price of PPE at the end of the year was lower than the price paid at the height of the pandemic.

The committee says a further £4bn was lost because equipment, such as masks and gowns, did not meet NHS standards, was defective or not needed.

It said the government had hired two commercial waste partners to get rid of the unused items - amounting to 15,000 pallets a month - through a combination of recycling and burning to generate power.

The committee warned the costs and environmental impact were "unclear" and asked the department to set out full details of how the equipment would be discarded.

The DoH insisted it did have a clear strategy for disposing of the items adding that it was using "a range of measures to manage excess stock of PPE" such as donating equipment to charities and transport agencies.