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 exported from the UK since 1 January 2020; and if he will provide a breakdown of those items.

HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) 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’. The site also contains a ‘Help’ function with information on how to extract trade data. This is available at the following link:

uktradeinfo.com

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.