Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment he has made since the publication the Government’s personal protective equipment (PPE) strategy in September 2020 of the (a) adequacy and (b) appropriateness of the four months’ stockpile of PPE pledged for winter 2020-21 to (i) protect healthcare workers and (ii) meet demand, in the context of recent increases in covid-19 cases.

Since February 2020 we have ordered almost 32 billion items of personal protective equipment (PPE), the majority of which has already been delivered or is on its way and by December we had built a four-month stockpile of all COVID-19 critical PPE. We are confident we have secured enough PPE for the ongoing challenges of COVID-19 and that we have the processes and logistics in place to distribute PPE to where it is needed.