Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if he will make an assessment of the potential implications for his policies of the report by Goodair and Reeves entitled Outsourcing health-care services to the private sector and treatable mortality rates in England, 2013–20: an observational study of NHS privatisation, published in the Lancet in July 2022.

The safety of all patients, whether they are treated in the National Health Service or the independent sector, is a top priority for the Government. All providers of healthcare are regulated by the Care Quality Commission and follow a set of fundamental standards of safety and quality, below which care should never fall. The Department considers a wide range of material when developing policies. We do not intend to make a specific assessment of this report.