Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, pursuant to the Answer of 22 February 2022 to Question 114760 on Coronavirus: Protective Clothing, if his Department will make and publish an estimate of the costs of storage and warehousing for PPE from August 2021 to date; and whether his Department has made an estimate of the current daily, weekly or monthly costs of storage and warehousing for PPE.

The information is not held in the format requested. The Department reports on storage costs on a quarterly basis based on invoiced expenditure. Between 1 September 2021 to 30 November 2021, the latest information available, the total cost for personal protective equipment (PPE) storage in the United Kingdom was £72.4 million and £5.8 million for storage in China.

We estimate current storage costs to be approximately £3.3 million a week. This is a reduction of 82% compared to October 2020.