Lord Alton of Liverpool
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Living with Covid-19
Lord Alton of Liverpool Excerpts(2 years, 9 months ago)
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Lord Alton of Liverpool (CB)
My Lords, will the noble Baroness return to a question put to her by the noble Baroness, Lady Smith of Basildon, about the number of lateral flow tests that have come from the People’s Republic of China? Is she aware that by the summer of last year over a billion such tests had been bought by the United Kingdom? This week in another place, it was confirmed that we have bought 24.1 billion PPE items with China registered as their country of origin, including 10.7 billion gloves. Before we consider this further during the course of the Health and Care Bill, on an amendment from her noble friend Lord Blencathra, will the noble Baroness undertake to tell us how much has been spent on these items and what we are doing to build up our own resilience and reduce dependency?
Baroness Evans of Bowes Park (Con)
As I said in response to the noble Baroness, we are working with manufacturers in the UK to encourage the build-up of supply and capability in this country and we will continue to do so because we want resilience in this area.