Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what proportion of service level agreements relating to processing (a) safeguarding (i) alerts and (ii) concerns and (b) whistleblowing have been reached at the Care Quality Commission in the last two months.

The Care Quality Commission (CQC) receives feedback on care through its dedicated digital service, 'Give feedback on care', and its National Customer Service Centre (NCSC). As well as online through the digital service, healthcare staff or members of the public can contact CQC via phone, email or letter.

When CQC receives a safeguarding and/or whistleblowing concern, this is received by the NCSC team who will triage and prioritise the concern for further action.

Highest priority alerts are sent to the relevant local authority for further action, as they have the powers to intervene if necessary.

For the last two months CQC processed 6,219 safeguarding enquiries, including both alerts and concerns and it received and processed 1,888 whistleblowing enquiries.

In July 2023, CQC launched their new digital platform, which has already shown substantial increase in the number of safeguarding enquiries in August.