Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many items of personal protective equipment have been shipped from the UK in each month of 2020.

HM Revenue and Customs is responsible for the collection and publication of data on United Kingdom imports and exports of goods to and from the UK. HMRC releases this information monthly, as a National Statistic called the Overseas Trade in Goods Statistics.

There is aggregated trade data available for personal protective equipment (PPE) goods and for the periods requested on HMRC’s website, under ‘Build your own data tables’ at the following link:

uktradeinfo.com

The site also contains a ‘Help’ function with information on how to extract trade data.

HMRC also maintains a list of COVID-19 products, including PPE goods, and their commodity codes on GOV.UK. Unfortunately, the trade data collected does not allow HMRC to distinguish PPE goods classified under a particular commodity code from any non-PPE goods classified under that same commodity code.