Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask Her Majesty's Government, further to the Written Answer by Lord Bethell on 14 May (HL3356), on what date in 2020 ministers ordered a reassessment of personal protective equipment requirements across the NHS and the care services sector; and when the results of that reassessment were communicated to ministers.

While the United Kingdom entered the current situation with a stockpile designed to respond to a pandemic influenza and a no-deal exit from the European Union, the supply chain for personal protective equipment (PPE) was designed to accommodate delivering to 226 National Health Service trusts.

We published the ‘Coronavirus (COVID-19): personal protective equipment (PPE) plan’ on 10 April, and since that week, we have massively scaled this up, providing essential PPE supplies to 58,000 different providers including care homes, general practitioner surgeries, hospices and community care organisations.