Inmates at eight UK prisons will reportedly start making personal protective equipment (PPE) at a third of the market cost for NHS staff battling the coronavirus pandemic.
Justice Secretary Robert Buckland was quoted by The Daily Telegraph as saying that prisoners have been drafted in to produce scrubs and face visors after prices for PPE soared due to Covid-19 demand.
A-category facilities housing male prisoners, who pose the most threat to the public, the police or national security if they escape, are not thought to be involved in the effort.
Scrubs will be made at a saving of £10 per set and workers will be paid a weekly wage, it is understood.
Their efforts will support those of the John Lewis department store chain which has brought a group of workers back from furlough to make clinical gowns as the race for PPE continues amid worldwide shortages.
The category B and C prisons involved in the scheme includes Swansea, Channings Wood in Devon, Wakefield, Highpoint in Suffolk, Whatton in Nottinghamshire and New Hall in West Yorkshire, which holds women and young offenders.
The prisons will make scrubs for around £5 a set, compared with their £15 price tag on the open market.
An initial order has been made for the manufacture of 5,000 scrub tops and 5,000 laundry bags for the scrubs.
Prisoners will be paid their standard weekly wage of around £12.50, the paper reported.
“Staff in our NHS are doing an incredible job … and I’m delighted that inmates are supporting them by producing equipment to help keep them safe,” Mr Buckland told the paper.
Meanwhile, John Lewis is reopening its textiles factory in Darwen, Lancashire, to make 8,000 clinical gowns, according to The Guardian.
The group has called up 15 expert sewers from furlough to make the gowns for the Northumbria NHS Foundation Trust, which runs at least nine hospitals and other clinics in the north-east.
“We will be forever grateful for this support from John Lewis which will directly, and positively, impact on our front line workers and patients – helping to keep them safe,” Sir James Mackey, the trust’s chief executive, told The Guardian.
