Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what recent assessment he has made of the sufficiency of supply of personal protective equipment for the winter 2020-21 period for (a) NHS hospitals and other NHS settings, (b) pharmacies, (c) care homes and (d) dental surgeries.

We have stabilised the United Kingdom personal protective equipment (PPE) supply chain; we have over 32 billion PPE items on order and are building a stockpile equivalent to approximately four months PPE usage at COVID-19 usage levels which will be in place by November.

In the seven days to 4 October 2020, the Department distributed over 149 million PPE items for use by health and social care services in England through the PPE Dedicated Supply Channel, NHS Supply Chain and other routes.

Due to the strength of our supply we are ensuring many millions of additional PPE items reach those on the frontline through the PPE portal. The order limits on the PPE portal have now increased so that primary and social care providers will be able to order PPE to meet their COVID-19 PPE needs, free of charge.

The PPE Portal can be used by adult social care residential care homes, domiciliary care providers, children’s social care settings, general practitioners, community pharmacies, dentists, orthodontists, optometrists, and community and residential drug and alcohol services in England.