Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what recent steps he has taken to review whistleblowing processes in the NHS.

As part of its role to lead culture change so that speaking up becomes business as usual in the National Health Service, the National Guardian’s Office carries out Speak Up reviews, which seek to identify learning and changes that will improve the experience of workers, patients and the public. The most recent Speak Up review looked at NHS ambulance trusts to understand their speaking up culture and identify areas for improvement. The Care Quality Commission also looks at Freedom to Speak Up within NHS organisations under the ‘well led’ part of its assessment framework.

More generally, workers who blow the whistle are entitled to protections, which were introduced through the Public Interest Disclosure Act 1998. On 27 March 2023, the Government announced a review of the wider whistleblowing framework. The review will examine the effectiveness of the framework in meeting its intended objectives – namely to enable workers to come forward to speak up about wrongdoing and to protect those who do so against detriment and dismissal.