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 7 January 2019 to Question 203449 on Drugs, whether all the additional medicine warehousing capacity referred to in that Answer has received planning permission from the relevant local authority.

Contract agreements for storage have recently been signed or will be signed imminently. We have agreed funding on the condition that the additional medicine warehousing capacity is in place in time to accommodate stockpiled medicines by the beginning of February 2019.

Those warehouses are all in existence and have planning permission. It is for those contractors to determine the best means of ensuring that the warehouses are adequately staffed in line with their normal business practices.