Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask Her Majesty's Government what was the level of bullying reported in the latest NHS Staff Survey; and what were the comparable figures for each of the last 20 years.

Employers are responsible for tackling bullying and harassment of staff. The Department is not complacent and Ministers are committed to meeting their manifesto commitment in tackling rates of bullying and harassment which are far too high. To that end, the Department is working with employers and unions in partnership to prioritise actions including the importance of line manager training, continuing to raise the profile of the issue and using Care Quality Commission inspections to assess progress, as we enter the second year of the national Social Partnership Forum’s Tackling Bullying in the NHS: A collective call to action published in December 2016. A copy of Tackling Bullying in the NHS is attached.

NHS England has provided the information and statistics which are attached due to the size of the data. The NHS Staff Survey was first undertaken in 2003. Questions about harassment, bullying and abuse have been included each year since then although it is not always possible to compare results from different years due to amendments to questions or survey method. We have, therefore, put together figures from the Staff Survey in different groups i.e. figures for 2012 – 2016 are comparable but not with other groupings; similarly, those for 2010/11, 2004-9 and 2003. The results from 2012 to 2016 are comparable.