An RAF plane, believed to be carrying a delayed consignment of personal protective equipment (PPE), has landed in the UK.

FLIGHT tracker RadarBox showed the Airbus A400-M registered ZM416 depart Istanbul and land just after 3.30am on Wednesday at RAF Brize Norton.

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The plane had been dispatched from the Oxfordshire base, where two other planes are on stand-by to pick up further kit from Turkey, late on Monday.

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.

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Health minister Helen Whately said there has not been a political decision made that Britain should not to become involved in EU procurement programmes to acquire equipment for dealing with the coronavirus outbreak.

The senior civil servant at the Foreign Office Sir Simon McDonald told a Commons committee on Tuesday that ministers had taken a "political decision" not to join a programme to procure ventilators, only to later issue a retraction.