Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, with reference to the Report of the Morecambe Bay Investigation by Dr Bill Kirkup, published in March 2015, what steps his Department has taken to help ensure that NHS England draws up a protocol to clarify the division of responsibilities for oversight of service quality and the implementation of measures to correct failures.

The National Quality Board (NQB) provides coordinated leadership for quality on behalf of the Department, Public Health England, NHS England, the Care Quality Commission, NHS Improvement, NHS Digital and the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence.

The NQB works to promote quality nationally; support local quality improvement with providers, commissioners and those who use services; and identify new challenges and opportunities to improve quality.

Quality Surveillance Groups bring together different parts of the health and care system, to share intelligence about risks to quality and identify those risks to quality at as early a stage as possible.