UK coronavirus live: government’s PPE procurement claims unravel | Politics

The care minister, Helen Whately, has confirmed that some PPE supplies from Turkey have arrived at RAF Brize Norton. She also insisted the initial decision to opt out of an EU procurement scheme was not political.

Speaking to Sky News she said:

The plane has now arrived bringing really vital PPE with it. The consignment is being checked. What we know with these deliveries is that they do not always have exactly what you expect.

On the EU scheme she said

There do seem some misunderstandings about the EU scheme. I am assured there was no political decision about the involvement in it

The reason we weren’t involved in the initial scheme was to do with a communications error. We are now participating in one EU scheme and ready to participate in future schemes.

The important thing is making sure that we are getting the PPE that we need.

Stephen Hawking’s ventilator has been donated to the Royal Papworth Hospital in Cambridge to help treat patients with coronavirus.

The physicist, who had motor neurone disease, died in 2018, aged 76.

His daughter, Lucy Hawking, said:

Our father received brilliant, dedicated and compassionate medical care from both Royal Papworth and Addenbrooke’s Hospitals in Cambridge.

As a ventilated patient, Royal Papworth was incredibly important to my father and helped him through some very difficult times.

We realised that it would be at the forefront of the Covid-19 epidemic and got in touch with some of our old friends there to ask if we could help.

Welcome to our UK coronavirus live blog.

Ministers’ claims about efforts to procure vital medical equipment appear to be unravelling amid fresh evidence of failures to secure supplies.

The government missed opportunities to secure at least 16m face masks for NHS staff in the past four weeks, the Guardian has revealed.

And Brussels sources have told the BBC that the UK was given ample opportunity to part in an EU scheme to source medical equipment.

Sir Simon McDonald, the permanent secretary at the Foreign Office, told MPs that the decision to opt out was political. But he was then forced to retract the claim within hours after he was contradicted by the health secretary, Matt Hancock.

But commentators have picked over the strange wording of McDonald’s retraction.

Meanwhile, an RAF plane, believed to be carrying a delayed consignment of personal protective equipment for NHS staff, has landed in the UK.

The plane had been dispatched from the Oxfordshire base, where two other planes are on stand-by to pick up further kit from Turkey. It is not known if the consignment, which was ordered on Thursday and originally due to arrive on Sunday, includes 400,000 badly-needed surgical gowns.

Later on Wednesday, Labour’s new leader, Keir Starmer will quiz the foreign secretary, Dominic Raab, over the government’s handling of the coronavirus crisis during the first virtual Prime Minister’s Questions.

Starmer is expected to spend his first PMQs as Labour leader questioning Boris Johnson’s stand-in over testing, safety equipment for frontline workers and an exit strategy from the lockdown.