Lifting the Lockdown: Workplace Safety
Debate between Peter Kyle and Paul Scully(4 years, 6 months ago)
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Paul Scully
My hon. Friend is absolutely right to stand up for small businesses. This is why we have said that unless businesses are among those that were required to close, they can continue to operate so that they are in the best place to survive, bounce back and contribute to the UK’s recovery from this situation. We need to ensure that we do that safely and that employers are acting responsibly, and that will be dealt with by involving as many people as we can in getting specific guidelines for each different workplace in each part of the UK and getting those messages across.
Peter Kyle (Hove) (Lab) [V]
Supplies of PPE are still extremely tightly constrained. What are the Government doing to ensure that when employers start to buy face masks and other equipment to keep their employees safe, the price and supply of PPE will not be extremely distorted?
Paul Scully
We are working with supply chains in the UK and across the world to ensure that, with the huge demand for PPE in a number of different countries that are all suffering and working through the same situation together, we can be at the forefront of this. With the work being done by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care and my colleagues in the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, along with Lord Deighton, we will be able to ensure that the supply chains remain readily available, and in that way we can also work on fair pricing.