Thursday 23rd April 2020

(4 years, 6 months ago)

Lords Chamber
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Baroness Finlay of Llandaff Portrait The Deputy Speaker
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Lord Woolf. No? Lord Dobbs.

Lord Dobbs Portrait Lord Dobbs (Con)
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Minister, are prisoners in our prison system participating in the manufacture of PPE? Does the crisis not represent an opportunity for many prisoners to not only contribute but move towards some rehabilitation?

Lord Bethell Portrait Lord Bethell
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My noble friend Lord Dobbs is right that there seems to be an opportunity, but I have to be candid with him. Our need for PPE runs into hundreds of millions of items. We have delivered more than 1 billion pieces of PPE since Covid began. I am afraid to say that the manufacturing abilities of Her Majesty’s prisons do not reach to that kind of level.