Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether frontline NHS staff are being routinely provided with high quality FFP3 protective masks.

Personal protective equipment (PPE), including FFP3 masks, must be fit for purpose, meeting the necessary safety standards to ensure it provides the required level of protection.

Certification of PPE is supplied by the manufacturer having the product independently tested. Assurance is checked by the regulators, the Health and Safety Executive and the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency. Evidence of certification is requested for products as part of the due diligence process. Contracts that involve the manufacture of PPE have the appropriate clauses to ensure that testing and certification is undertaken before the goods are accepted.

We now have over twelve models of FFP3s masks available to the National Health Service. In December we established a four-month stockpile of COVID-19 critical PPE, including FFP3s. We are confident that we have secured enough FFP3s for the winter period and that we have the processes and logistics in place to distribute them to where they are required.