Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, pursuant to the Answer of 11 March to Question 35836 on NHS: Negligence, how many patient (a) deaths and (b) life-changing injuries resulted from those instances of clinical negligence in each year financial year since 2019-20, broken down by speciality.

NHS Resolution (NHSR) manages clinical negligence and other claims against the National Health Service in England. A table showing the number of clinical negligence claims where payments have been made between the financial years 2019/20 and 2023/24, where the injury 'fatality' is present at any level, broken down by year and specialty, is in the document attached, under Table 1.

In addition, a table showing the number of clinical negligence claims where periodical payment orders or settlements above the £4.7 million threshold, where payments were made between the financial years 2019/20 and 2023/24 for 'life-changing' injuries, but excluding 'fatality' at any level, and broken down by year and specialty, is in the document attached, under Table 2.

NHSR is unable to break down fatalities by a mother/child split, as they often receive claims from both the mother and child for the same incident, and their coding does not distinguish who has died in those instances. In terms of life-changing injuries, NHSR does not code for this and therefore cannot provide data. The term life-changing injuries could also have various meanings. They have, however, provided data using the actuarial value for Periodical Payment Order (PPO) payments, which is over £4.7 million. Any case which is estimated to settle over this value will have life changing injuries. There will be claims below that level that have life changing injuries, but this is the best way NHSR can try and provide this data.

As the data relates to payments made during the relevant financial years, it is also possible that the same claim may appear more than once in the dataset. For example, one payment is made in 2021/22, and a separate payment is made in 2022/23 for the same claim.

In respect of PPO cases that have been resolved, the information provided here includes lump sum damages, costs, and any PPO damages paid up to the end of the financial year 2023/24. It does not include PPO damages which have been committed to, but which are due to be paid after the financial year 2023/24.

NHSR has supressed low figures as the disclosure of information with this level of granularity is exempt under Section 40(2) by virtue of section 40(3A) (a) of the Freedom of Information Act. NHSR believes it has a greater responsibility to protect those individuals’ identities, as disclosure could potentially cause damage and/or distress to those involved. Where we are in the territory of such small numbers in the attached document, NHSR has used a ‘#’ symbol in the relevant field. However, you should still be able to see aggregate/total details for higher level fields containing this data.