Recommendation 3

There is no clear plan for how big the PPE stockpile needs to be and how the Department will build greater resilience into the NHS supply chain so that it can respond at pace to future urgent needs. Having an appropriate PPE stockpile and a resilient NHS supply chain is crucial to the Department’s successful response to any future pandemic and infectious disease risks. The Department has historically relied on international supply chains and held a stockpile of PPE, medicines and clinical consumables to mitigate the reasonable worst-case scenario risk of an influenza pandemic only. The Department has not yet decided on what level of stockpile it will hold for future pandemics and whether it should buy PPE from British manufacturers to shorten the length of the supply chain and more effectively manage the quality and delivery speed of items. The Department estimates that if it held a stockpile sufficient to deal with a pandemic equivalent to COVID-19 then it believes it would be value for money only if there was a pandemic every 12 years. The Department has important work to do to identify an appropriate level of stockpile; balancing the need to hold sufficient PPE to mitigate the risk of potential supply chain delays and price spikes in the early stages of a pandemic, with the ongoing cost of storing PPE, and the risk of items going out of date without ever being used. Recommendation: The Department should develop a clear plan to increase the resilience of the NHS supply chain to be able to respond at speed if there is another pandemic or variant of concern and needs to explain in detail to the Committee how it intends to work out what items and how much PPE it needs to hold as a national stockpile going forward.