Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how much personal protective equipment (PPE) the Government has purchased that has not been used as a result of being (a) unwanted and (b) unusable since 1 January 2020; what the total cost is of that PPE; and what the daily cost is of storing that PPE.

The personal protective equipment (PPE) programme has ordered over 36.4 billion items since March 2020. Of this, approximately 3.4 billion units are currently identified as potential excess stock. The estimated purchase price for those items is £2.2 billion.

In addition, a total of 6.96 billion items are not currently provided to frontline services. This can be for a variety of reasons, including new stock that has not yet cleared assurance processes or where a different product is preferred. Of these, 1.2 billion items are deemed to be not fit for use. The purchase price for these items was £458 million. Data on the specific storage costs is not held in the format requested. However, on 13 December 2021 weekly storage costs for all stock was £4.5 million.