House of Commons Health and Social Care Select Committee: Correspondence from the Parliamentary Under Secretary of State on the Committee’s Expert Panel’s evaluation on Patient Safety (27 November 2023)

Summary

On the 24 October 2023 the Health and Social Care Select Committee announced that its independent Expert Panel would be undertaking an evaluation of government progress on implementing accepted recommendations to improve patient safety. As part of this review, the Committee wrote to the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care requesting a list of key independent public inquiry and review recommendations pertaining to patient safety and whistleblowing in the NHS that that the Government has accepted since 2010.

This letter sets out the response to this request from Maria Caulfield MP, Parliamentary Under Secretary of State.

Content

In this letter the Minister lists the key independent public inquiry and reviews pertaining to patient safety and whistleblowing in the NHS since 2010 as follows:

• The Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust Public Inquiry (2013)
• Berwick review into patient safety (2013)
• The Morecambe Bay Investigation (2015)
• Freedom to Speak Up: An independent review into creating an open and honest reporting culture in the NHS (2015)
• Independent review into Liverpool Community Health NHS Trust (2018)
• The Independent Inquiry into issues raised by Paterson (2020)
• The Independent Medicines and Medical Devices Safety Review (2020)
• Independent investigation into the life and death of Elizabeth Dixon (2020)
• Health and social care review: leadership for a collaborative and inclusive future (‘Messenger Review’) (2022)
• The Independent Review of Maternity Services at the Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital NHS Trust (2022)
• The Independent Investigation into Maternity and Neonatal Services at East Kent Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust (2022)

She also notes in the letter that:

• The Infected Blood Inquiry has not been listed here as the Inquiry’s final report is due in March 2024.
• The Gosport Independent Panel Report of 2018 has not been included as it did not make specific recommendations.

The letter contains, as appendices, a list of all the recommendations accepted by the Government from the eleven inquiry and reviews listed above.

Related reading

Mind the implementation gap: The persistence of avoidable harm in the NHS (Patient Safety Learning, April 2022)