Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask Her Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of reports that directors of social care in England issued warnings two years ago about the need for better supply plans for personal protective equipment in the event of a pandemic.

We have been developing pandemic response plans for many years working closely with our national and sector partners, including adult social care. Since the start of this outbreak we have continued to work with the adult social care sector and public health experts to put in place support for social care, including around personal protective equipment (PPE).

In mid-March, social care providers across England received an emergency drop of over seven million PPE items from the pandemic flu stockpile.

As of 29 May, we have released 127 million items of PPE to designated wholesalers for onward sale to social care providers. Between 6 April and 31 May we have authorised the release of over 124 million items of PPE to local resilience forums to help them respond to urgent local spikes in need across the adult social care system We have also mobilised a National Supply Disruption Response system to respond to emergency PPE requests, including for the social care sector.

We have developed a parallel supply chain with almost 3,000 providers to support the normal supply chain before the national roll out. This is a dedicated channel for critical PPE and core PPE products for Covid-19 are flowing through this. As of 15 May, over a million items have been delivered via the portal, which is now rolling out nationally to general practitioners and small residential and domiciliary care providers.