Coronavirus: Protective Clothing

(asked on 25th January 2021) - View Source

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what estimate he has made of the number of containers storing personal protective equipment (PPE) held at British ports; what assessment he has made of (a) the type and (b) the expiration dates of PPE held in those containers and (c) whether it is compliant with required safety standards.


Answered by
Jo Churchill Portrait
Jo Churchill
Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
This question was answered on 1st February 2021

The Department has a storage network in place that lets us access and manage our personal protective equipment (PPE) supply to meet demand throughout the winter. We currently hold fewer than 400 shipping containers at British ports.

Clipper, our logistics partner, manages the PPE distribution centre in Daventry. They have a stock audit team who undertake a rolling audit of all the PPE in the warehouses. As part of the audit activity, expiry dates for PPE are captured in a stock management system, enabling us to ensure that the PPE we supply is in date and of the required standard.

We are closely monitoring storage capacity across the United Kingdom on a routine basis and the Department has identified several options to increase storage capacity if needed.

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