Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask Her Majesty's Government what review arrangements are in place to assess whether care homes’ access to personal protective equipment, including masks, meets their requirements; and what national schemes are in place to ensure an adequate supply of such equipment to care homes (1) now, and (2) in the future.

During this unprecedented global outbreak, we have kept our social care guidance under constant review and have been working tirelessly with the sector to reduce transmission and save lives. The Government is fully committed to ensuring care homes feel confident in their personal protective equipment (PPE) supply. We are now confident in the stocks and sources of supply of PPE to meet the needs of health and social care over the next seven and 90 days.

More widely, in the long term, we have set out a comprehensive action plan to support the adult social care sector throughout the COVID-19 outbreak. This has included £3.2 billion of funding for councils and providing millions of items of PPE.