Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many items of personal protective equipment are in the stockpile of personal protective equipment for the NHS.

We have stabilised the UK PPE supply chain. Since 25 February 2020, the Department of Health and Social Care has distributed over 3.8 billion PPE items for use by health and social care services in England, which includes gowns, gloves, visors and surgical masks. We have over 32 billion PPE items on order and are building a stockpile equivalent to approximately 4 months PPE usage at COVID-19 usage levels which will be in place by November.

As set out in our PPE Strategy, which was published on 28 September, we are confident in managing demand for PPE arising from any second spike and from the winter period.

The operational process to build stockpiles is supported by a range of detailed operational and management data. We are working with those data flows to produce figures that could be published as official statistics; making the information available in a fully validated and clear way that aids understanding.