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 merits of enabling the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman to enforce rulings in cases of NHS complaints raised with the service.

We are not persuaded of the need for legal enforcement powers for the Parliamentary and Health Service’s (PHSO) rulings. The PHSO has processes in place to ensure recommendations are acted upon, ranging from following up with the organisation and escalating to a senior level within the organisation if required. In the rare instances that an organisation fails or refuses to act on a PHSO recommendation, PHSO has options to escalate within Parliament and make regulators or commissioners aware of such a failure.