NHS: Sexual Offences

(asked on 20th June 2019) - View Source

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what estimate his Department has made of the number of complaints of sexual (a) harassment and (b) abuse made by NHS staff against (i) patients and (ii) NHS staff.


Answered by
Stephen Hammond Portrait
Stephen Hammond
This question was answered on 25th June 2019

The Department is committed to supporting trusts in their responsibility for tackling all forms of harassment and abuse including sexual via the Social Partnership Forum’s ‘Creating positive workplace cultures and tackling bullying in the NHS - a collective call to action’, the Alliance of Healthcare Organisations committed to civility and respect throughout the National Health Service and the new offer for staff being developed as part of the People Plan.

Statutory guidance will be issued later this year to clarify for employers what reasonable steps they should be taking, as required under the Equality Act 2010, to protect staff as well as the consultation on potential new legislation aimed at further deterring sexual harassment.

The Department does not collect data on the number of complaints of sexual harassment and abuse against patients or NHS staff, as many are dealt with locally in line with the NHS Complaints procedure. Further information is available at the following link:

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/the-nhs-constitution-for-england/how-do-i-give-feedback-or-make-a-complaint-about-an-nhs-service

The NHS Staff Survey records staff reporting whether they have been bullied, abused or physically assaulted but these figures are not broken down to separately identify sexual harassment or abuse.

NHS Digital publishes reasons for leaving data as part of the Hospital and Community Health Services workforce statistics for England. This can be found at the following link:

https://digital.nhs.uk/data-and-information/publications/statistical/nhs-workforce-statistics/december-2018

However, the data does not go into the level of granularity of staff leaving as a result of sexual harassment or abuse at work.

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