Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps the Government has taken to introduce the sterilisation of respirators with hydrogen peroxide vapour to enable the safe re-use of single-use personal protection equipment.

Technical experts have been brought together by the United Kingdom Government from the Health and Safety Executive, the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency, the National Health Service, and devolved administrations to review the available evidence and undertake testing on the scientific feasibility of safely reusing certain types of personal protective equipment (PPE), to reduce plastic waste and improve sustainability of PPE. The expert committee is focused on the scientific validity and safety of different approaches to the decontamination and reuse of PPE, including the use of vaporised hydrogen peroxide for decontamination of FFP3 respirator masks.