Patient safety: MPs urge Streeting to stop “forced merger” of agencies

MPs have written to health secretary Wes Streeting asking him to stop a “forced merger” between two patient safety bodies.

The all party parliamentary group (APPG) on patient safety says that the Health Services Safety Investigation Body (HSSIB) should be kept separate, rather than becoming part of the Care Quality Commission (CQC).

APPG co-chair Jeremy Hunt told The BMJ, “At a time when families want honesty and real change, we should be strengthening the HSSIB’s role and ensuring evidence based safety recommendations are properly tracked and implemented, not weakening the very independence that makes it credible.”

Hunt, a former Conservative health secretary, said, however, that the APPG supported the need to simplify the patient safety landscape which had “become too diffuse and complicated.”

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Source: BMJ, 3 March 2026