Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps his Department is taking to (a) strengthen protections for NHS whistleblowers and (b) prevent repercussions for those who raise patient safety concerns.

The Government has been clear that the silencing of whistleblowers will not be tolerated, and that National Health Service staff should have the confidence to speak out and come forward if they have concerns.

There is a network of more than 1,200 local Freedom to Speak Up Guardians across healthcare in England, whose role is to help and support NHS workers who want to speak up about any concerns that they have. There is also a national Freedom to Speak Up policy, published by NHS England, which sets out the minimum standards for local Freedom to Speak Up policies across the NHS, with all NHS organisations having been instructed to adopt this policy. These initiatives sit alongside legal protections for whistleblowers, which have been strengthened so that they also prohibit discrimination against job applicants on the grounds that they have spoken up in the past.

In November 2024, the Department launched a consultation on options for regulating NHS managers, with the aim of improving leadership quality and accountability. This will help ensure that the NHS has strong and effective leadership in place, and that leaders and managers are held accountable for their practice. The consultation closed on 18 February 2025 and had strong engagement, receiving nearly 5,000 responses.