Manufacturing Industries: Coronavirus

(asked on 1st June 2020) - View Source

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many companies have (a) contacted and (b) been engaged by the Government to assist with the manufacture of equipment to help tackle the covid-19 outbreak in (a) England, (b) the North East, (c) Northumberland and (d) Wansbeck constituency.


Answered by
Jo Churchill Portrait
Jo Churchill
Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
This question was answered on 13th July 2020

We are building up United Kingdom manufacturing with signed contracts to manufacture over 2 billion items of personal protective equipment (PPE) through UK-based manufacturers, including facemasks, visors, gowns and aprons.

The Government is currently in contact with over 350 potential UK manufacturers. Engineering efforts by small companies are being scaled up and we have already taken delivery of products from new, certified UK manufacturers.

To date, we have authorised the release of over 139 million items of PPE to local resilience forums to help them respond to urgent local spikes in need across the adult social care system and some other frontline services, where providers are unable to access PPE through their usual, or dedicated wholesaler routes.

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