Protective Clothing: Procurement
(asked on 20th April 2020) - View Source
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps the Government is taking to expedite procurement processes for personal protective equipment.
The Government’s Personal Protection Equipment (PPE) plan was published on 10 April and can be found at the following link:
As Strand 3 details, we have set up a cross-Government PPE sourcing unit to secure new supply lines from across the world and a call to industry has been issued to companies at home to manufacture and supply additional PPE at scale.
There has been limited United Kingdom manufacture of PPE to date and so new supply channels for materials to make PPE have been sourced at pace in order to enable new manufacturing to commence.
We are working with industry partners such as the Royal Mint, Burberry and Jaguar Land Rover to produce gowns and face visors and Don & Low will be manufacturing 12 million metres squared of fabric for gowns over the next six months. We are also in conversation with several additional manufacturers regarding the production of eye protection, masks and gowns to start this new sector of UK manufacturing.