Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what plans he has to continue free provision of personal protective equipment (PPE) to CQC registered settings; and whether he has made an assessment of the effect of his planned policy on that matter on businesses that supply PPE on a commercial basis.

The Government is extending the provision of free personal protective equipment (PPE) for all health, social care and public sector workers until the end of June. The Government has made this decision to ensure that frontline and wider public service workers can access rigorously tested and high-quality PPE as vaccination efforts progress. The scheme will be reviewed in April 2021 to determine PPE provision beyond June 2021.

The Department remains in constructive discussions with wholesalers on the provision of COVID-19 PPE and we have sought and considered a range of viewpoints in reaching the decision to continue provision. The PPE we are providing is for COVID-19 purposes only and we have established limits to ordering to ensure providers are using the PPE portal for this purpose. This means that wholesale business-as-usual PPE distribution continues as before.