Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask Her Majesty's Government what plans they have, if any, to compensate (1) staff, and (2) residents, of care homes who have been adversely affected by shortages of personal protective equipment.

There are currently no plans to compensate staff or residents of care homes.

The Government has published a range of guidance to help care providers reduce the spread of infection. The guidance sets out advice for those affected on how to minimise risks of transmission, through good infection control practices, and set out some of the steps that local authorities and the National Health Service should take to support care providers through the pandemic. We will continue to update this guidance as is required.

For supplies of personal protective equipment, we encourage all care providers to continue to use their business as usual supply chains. Where this is not possible, we are supporting the existing supplier network by providing stock of PPE to 11 wholesalers for adult social care.

If a provider has been unsuccessful in obtaining PPE through these routes, they can approach their Local Resilience Forum (LRF) to set out their PPE needs. If they are unable to access PPE through their LRF, a provider can raise a request for an emergency pack of PPE through the National Supply Disruption Response system.

We are working with e-commerce experts to launch a Parallel Supply Chain, a new web-based system for procuring PPE which will be managed in line with the published guidance from Public Health England, integrated with NHS Supply Chain's central PPE logistic operations and shipped directly to providers via Royal Mail.??Over one million items have been delivered via the portal, which is now rolling out nationally to small residential and domiciliary care providers.