Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if he will publish a strategy document on steps to improve the responsiveness of NHS England to complaints; and if he will make a statement.

NHS England is taking a range of actions to ensure that complaints made to it as a commissioner of a range of NHS services are timely and of a good quality.

NHS England has published a Complaints Policy which sets out how they manage, respond to and learn from complaints, and also a Quality Framework, which is based on the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman’s report ‘My Expectations’.

NHS England has also recently introduced a peer review process to monitor compliance with the Complaints Policy and Quality Framework. Key Performance Indicators relating to acknowledgment and response have been developed and are monitored and reported on a monthly basis.