Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what the value is of personal protective equipment purchased by the NHS in 2021 to date; and how much of that equipment was manufactured in the UK.
In financial year 2021/22, the total spend on personal protective equipment (PPE) to date is £330.5million. Of this, spend on PPE manufactured in the United Kingdom totals £96.2M.
The Department created the dedicated UK Make programme to increase domestic production. UK Make contracted with manufacturers in the UK able to mobilise and produce PPE for the frontline. However, not all UK-based manufacturers which provided PPE to healthcare settings were part of this programme.
The PPE programme raised contracts with 31 UK manufacturers and those contracts were all contracted by July 2020. We continue to receive goods purchased under those contracts and by 1 December 2020 inbound supply of UK manufactured PPE was sufficient to meet 82% of demand for PPE over the peak pandemic period of December to February, across all items except gloves.