Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many items of (a) surgical masks, (b) FFP3 masks, (c) gowns, (d) gloves and (e) eye protection are stockpiled; and what estimate he has made of how long those stockpiles of personal protective equipment will last.

We have stabilised the United Kingdom personal protective equipment (PPE) supply chain. Since 25 February 2020, the Department has distributed over 4.9 billion PPE items for use by health and social care services in England, which includes gowns, gloves, visors and surgical masks. We have around 32 billion PPE items on order and this month, we will have a four month stockpile of all COVID-19 critical PPE in place, with a tremendous contribution from UK manufacturers.

‘Personal protective equipment (PPE) strategy: stabilise and build resilience’, published on 28 September and available on GOV.UK, sets out how the Government is moving beyond the emergency COVID-19 response to stabilise and build resilience. We are confident we have secured enough supply for this winter period and that we have the processes and logistics in place to distribute PPE to where it is needed.

The operational process to build stockpiles is supported by a range of detailed operational and management data. We are working with those data flows to produce figures that could be published as official statistics; making the information available in a fully validated and clear way that aids understanding.