Recommendation 2

While government had plans and a stockpile of PPE, this proved inadequate for the COVID-19 pandemic. The Department had a strategy for managing an influenza pandemic, which included a stockpile of PPE owned and managed by Public Health England. In March 2020, NHS England & NHS Improvement gave public assurances to the Health and Social Care Committee that the stockpile would be sufficient to manage the pandemic, but this confidence was misplaced since the stockpile held no more than two-weeks’ worth of most types of PPE. Furthermore, it did not hold all of the planned PPE, such as visors and gowns, and some of the PPE it did hold had expired or did not meet current safety standards. Government and its contractors also struggled to distribute the stockpiled PPE quickly. In response to these problems the Department created a parallel supply chain to buy and distribute PPE. However, because of the time lag between ordering PPE and it being available, this could barely satisfy local organisations’ requirements. Frontline staff in health and social care experienced shortages of PPE, with surveys by staff representative organisations showing that at least 30% of participating care workers, doctors and nurses reported having insufficient PPE, even in high-risk settings. Provider organisations attempted to buy PPE at short notice, in an overheated market, and COVID-19: Government procurement and supply of Personal Protective Equipment 7 found they needed to pay hugely inflated prices to suppliers they were unfamiliar with. The PPE from central government was sometimes not usable and providers told us that emergency helplines referred them to suppliers which did not have PPE. Recommendation: The Department must improve its approach to managing and distributing stocks of PPE to ensure the correct equipment gets to those who need it, when they need it. The Department should write to us by July 2021 to confirm that: • Stockpiles hold everything required as specified in the Depa