Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment she has made of the effectiveness of NHS speak up guardians in (a) primary and (b) secondary care settings.

Freedom to Speak Up Guardians are a valued channel through which concerns can be raised, and have handled over 100,000 cases since the National Guardian’s Office first started collecting data in 2017. This represents over 100,000 opportunities for learning and improvement. In 2022/23 alone over 25,000 cases were raised with Freedom to Speak Up Guardians and over four-fifths, or 82.2% of those who gave feedback to their Freedom to Speak Up Guardian, said they would speak up again.