THE government is seeking a replacement or refund for thousands of medical gowns from Turkey that were impounded after being deemed not good enough for use within the NHS.

Once heralded by Communities Secretary Robert Jenrick as a “very significant additional shipment,” many of the gowns that arrived late at RAF Brize Norton two weeks ago have now been deemed useless.

Secretary of State for Northern Ireland Brandon Lewis said yesterday that the gowns proved to “not be of the quality that we feel is good enough for our front-line staff.”

They were supplied by Selegna Tekstil, which was only established on January 31 and has strong ties to the ruling Justice and Development Party  — raising questions over due diligence in the procurement process.

While it had been reported that all 400,000 gowns were deemed useless, a government statement later said that it had only received 67,000 of the items as yet, with 4,500 passing quality control checks and 2,400 failing.

The Department of Health would not tell the Morning Star how much it had paid for the defective shipment.