Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many clear face masks have been distributed to health and social care settings to allow lip reading and communication for deaf patients and staff.

The United Kingdom Government’s national personal protective equipment (PPE) procurement team has been working extremely hard to source clear face masks which comply with UK safety standards.

At the time of writing, the first batch of 20,250 clear face masks were sent out to National Health Service regions over a week ago. The second batch is due to be sent out this week. We have also sent clear masks to NHS Blood and Transplant services, as well as to the National Supply Disruption Response hotline. We also plan for clear masks to be available in social care settings and will communicate to providers how they can access this product as soon as possible.