Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether his Department has made an assessment of the effectiveness of using transparent face masks to facilitate lip reading to assist people with hearing difficulties.

NHS England and NHS Improvement’s transparent face mask working group produced a new technical specification which gives testing, design and performance requirements for single-use transparent face masks, with comparable protection to a Type IIR mask. This specification is available at the following link:

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/technical-specifications-for-personal-protective-equipment-ppe/transparent-face-mask-technical-specification

The Department is encouraging manufacturers to develop new, innovative products which meet the standard for transparent face masks and funding is available to run pilot schemes once they are available. Future procurement will be informed by this work.