DAUK said it had instructed a legal firm to press its case. The Good Law Project, which is helping to meet the costs of the case, accused the Government of denying explanations to the families of frontline healthcare workers who had lost their lives to COVID-19.

It said some of the deaths could have been due to a shortage of PPE.

Last month, a report by the National Audit Office found serious failures in the PPE supply chain. It concluded that faced with inadequate existing supplies, the Government had resorted to paying inflated prices to secure additional supplies.

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The legal challenge is being brought by the Doctors’ Association UK (DAUK) and the Good Law Project. Nearly 200 NHS and care workers have died after becoming infected with the coronavirus.

In a pre-action legal letter to the Department of Health and Social Care, the doctors say they support the government’s efforts to mitigate the crisis caused by the pandemic but are “deeply concerned” about the “failure to procure and supply adequate PPE”.

DAUK said the deaths of healthcare workers were a “tragedy. We had a pandemic stockpile of PPE lacking essential items like full gowns and eye protection; other equipment was out of date. There has been recurrent and systemic failure of the PPE supply chain, leaving staff in some instances with makeshift or no PPE.”

The barrister Jolyon Maugham, of the Good Law Project, which aims to use the law to improve society, said: “We must never be forced to ask NHS and care home workers to risk their lives again. We must learn the lessons from recent history. And we must learn them quickly, before the second and third waves of the pandemic.”

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