Streeting: Safety agency will be integrated into ‘failing’ CQC carefully

The health secretary has said the government will approach integrating the NHS’s “successful” safety watchdog into the “failing” Care Quality Commission with “enormous care”.

Speaking at the launch of the Global State of Patient Safety 2025 report in the House of Lords this week, Wes Streeting addressed the recommendations made by NHS England chair Penny Dash in her review of the regulatory bodies involved in patient safety. These included subsuming The Health Services Safety Investigations Branch into the CQC.

Mr Streeting said: “I want to reassure everyone here and beyond that as we proceed with [the Dash review’s recommendations], particularly the integration of HSSIB into the CQC, that we will do so with enormous care.

“The last thing I want to do is to take a successful organisation, merge it with a failing organisation, and to do so would be to the detriment of both.”

HSSIB – originally styled the Healthcare Safety Investigation Branch – was established in 2017 while Sir Jeremy Hunt was health secretary to conduct independent investigations into patient safety incidents across the NHS in England.

Maternity investigations were removed from HSSIB’s remit in 2023 and put into the CQC, as the Maternity and Newborn Safety Investigations programme.

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Source: HSJ, 30 January 2025