Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, with reference to Patient Safety Alert: Improving medication error incident reporting and learning, published by NHS England on 20 March 2014, what progress he has made in developing the National Medication Safety Network; and what channels are available for patient groups to make representations to the National Medication Safety Network.

NHS England, in collaboration with the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA), has carried out the following activities in relation to developing the National Medication Safety Network:

- Undertaken nine web events with presentations and recordings posted to the www.patientsafetyfirst.nhs.uk web forum accessed by Medication Safety Officers (MSOs). A total of 699 MSOs have participated in these formal web meetings.

- Run a conference for MSOs on 19 January 2015 with keynote speakers from NHS England, MHRA and the National Reporting and Learning System with 150 MSOs in attendance.

- Run dedicated web events for the 18 Community Pharmacy MSOs.

- Are arranging one-day regional meetings on 10 March 2015 (London), 15 July 2015 (Midlands) 12 May (South), 14 October (North) inviting 70-100 MSOs. A key aim of these events is to provide the opportunity for MSOs to feedback in person to NHS England and the MHRA on development of the MSO role.

- We have dedicated (0.4 full-time equivalent) support for development of the MSO role from the Specialist Pharmacy Service. The remit includes monitoring of engagement by MSOs in the network.

Although the NHS England Medication Safety team have not yet received any formal representations from national patient groups, MSOs have been encouraged to liaise with their local organisation ‘patient and public voice’ leads to help recruit patients onto their medication safety committees.

Members of the public and patient groups can also make enquiries directly to NHS England.