Covid-19: Personal Protective Equipment

Lord Blencathra Excerpts

Thursday 23rd April 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bethell]

The noble Baroness is entirely right to commend the sacrifice of hard-working care workers who put their safety on the line and put themselves in harm’s way. She is also correct to allude to the challenge for care homes—15,000 of them—that have previously largely looked after their own procurement arrangements. This Covid disease presents an enormous procurement challenge. The Government have stepped up and are helping care homes in many ways. Nearly a billion items of PPE have been distributed in the last six weeks and we will continue our commitment to support care homes.

[Lord Blencathra (Con)]

My Lords, first, I congratulate my noble friend on the excellent job he is doing in the department and on his diligence in answering our questions. I ask him this: if handwashing destroys coronavirus on our hands, why on earth do we not launder these 450,000 so-called disposable garments that we throw away each day? Is that not an appalling waste of resources, as well as bad for our environment? Will we radically step up making our own washable PPE, now and for the foreseeable future?

[Lord Bethell]

The noble Lord makes an entirely reasonable and common-sense request. It is one that I have put to officials myself. The practicalities of PPE are that you have to be prepared to be covered in large amounts of human fluids and for the garments to be waterproof against their impact. Staff are uncomfortable with wearing garments that may have been used in that way previously. In order to maintain levels of hygiene and to rid them of disease, it is very difficult to reuse them. However, we have a committee looking at the potential for reuse, which will be reporting shortly.