Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what discussions his Department has had with NHS England and NHS Improvement on replacing the NHS safety thermometer.

NHS England and NHS Improvement have no plans to replace the National Health Service safety thermometer. The data generated from the thermometer has been shown to be not fit for current purposes and is available from other existing sources.

NHS England and NHS Improvement discussed discontinuing the NHS safety thermometer with the Department during 2018/19 and 2019/20, due to emerging evidence that the data collected was incomplete and not being used as intended to support safety improvement. The specific decision to stop data collection in March 2020, in part to support the COVID-19 response by freeing up nursing time, was discussed with Departmental officials during March 2020.