Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether his Department has issued guidance to NHS Trusts on consulting their staff before establishing wholly owned subsidiaries.

The Health and Social Care Act 2003 gives foundation trusts the freedom to establish wholly owned subsidiaries. It is up to individual trusts to ensure good governance, including consulting with staff, when setting a wholly owned subsidiary.

A search of the Department’s ministerial correspondence database has identified one item of correspondence received since 1 January 2018 about the effect of wholly owned subsidiaries established by National Health Service trusts on patient safety. This figure represents correspondence received by the Department’s ministerial correspondence unit only.

We would expect NHS providers to place patient safety at the heart of all they do. Wholly owned subsidiaries are usually set up to provide back room services, not to deliver patient care.