\n<\/p>\n
Medical negligence in the NHS keeps harming and killing patients because governments and health service bosses have not acted on 24 years\u2019 worth of warnings, MPs have said.<\/p>\n
In a scathing report published on Friday, the public accounts committee (PAC) excoriates the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) and NHS England for allowing the cost of mistakes to balloon to \u00a33.6bn a year.<\/p>\n
Between them, the two bodies have failed to take \u201cany meaningful action\u201d to address the problem in England, despite four PAC reports from as early as 2002 advising them to do so, the committee says.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt feels impossible to accept that, despite two decades\u2019 worth of warnings, we still appear to be worlds away from government or [the] NHS engaging with the underlying causes of this issue,\u201d said Geoffrey Clifton-Brown, the chair of the influential cross-party committee.<\/p>\n
He cited \u201cunacceptable stasis\u201d surrounding maternity care as an example of inaction that is persistently harming patients and costing ever larger sums of taxpayer funding. Reports have been published since 2015 into maternity scandals in Morecambe Bay, East Kent, and Shrewsbury and Telford. Another inquiry is continuing into childbirth care in Nottingham.<\/p>\n
Last year, acute concern about maternity care across the NHS in England prompted Wes Streeting, the health secretary, to order an inquiry, led by Valerie Amos, into maternity care.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe PAC finds that, as government\u2019s liability for clinical negligence quadrupled over 20 years (\u00a360bn in 2024-25), the [Department of Health and Social Care] is unable to show any meaningful action taken to address this and the NHS has not done enough to tackle the underlying causes of patient harm,\u201d it said.<\/p>\n
The government\u2019s liability for clinical negligence has quadrupled in real terms since 2006-07 and reached a record high of \u00a360bn in 2024-25, the report said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is a swelling accounting of profound suffering,\u201d Clifton-Brown said. \u201cEach case can represent unspeakable devastation for the victims involved and the overall picture is of a system struggling to keep its patients safe from avoidable harm.\u201d<\/p>\n
Evidence the PAC collected during its inquiry showed that the NHS was \u201coverwhelmed\u201d with the sheer number of recommendations various bodies had made to improve patient safety. Several safety watchdogs, official inquiries and coroners regularly suggested changes.<\/p>\n
The PAC found in the report that:<\/p>\n
The \u00a33.6bn cost of medical negligence is diverting funds away from frontline NHS care.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n
Lawsuits involving brain-damaged babies can take up to 12 years to settle.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n
Some patients sue because hospitals refuse to tell them what went wrong with their care.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
\u201cThese mind-boggling clinical negligence costs are a horrific symptom of an NHS that has been neglected and mismanaged for too long,\u201d said Helen Morgan, the Liberal Democrats\u2019 health spokesperson.<\/p>\n
While the Conservatives pushed the NHS \u201cto the brink\u201d, Labour was doing too little to improve it, Morgan said. Its decision to remove a ringfence around dedicated funding for improving maternity care was \u201cnonsensical\u201d, she added.<\/p>\n
The PAC echoed the findings of several previous reports by urging the NHS to be much more open with patients and relatives when errors have occurred, and apologise sooner, to reduce both claims and costs. The NHS must also overhaul its \u201cconfusing and unresponsive\u201d complaints system in order to produce a more compassionate system, which would also save money, it added.<\/p>\n
A report published on Thursday about patient safety globally ranked the UK 21st of the 38 OECD member countries studied by experts at Imperial College London and Patient Safety Watch.<\/p>\n
Globally, deaths among people with severe mental illness such as bipolar disorder and schizophrenia were \u201ca major concern\u201d and too many people die as a result of medical treatment. The UK scored poorly for neonatal deaths and patients suffering complications when they undergo surgery.<\/p>\n
A DHSC spokesperson said: \u201cThis government inherited an NHS that was failing too many people.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have taken rapid action to strengthen patient safety \u2013 overhauling the Care Quality Commission, rolling out Martha\u2019s rule and Jess\u2019s rule so patients can get a fresh clinical review, and introducing hospital league tables to drive improvement.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have also brought in new maternity safety measures, are conducting an urgent investigation of failings and are establishing a taskforce, so every mother can have confidence in NHS care once again.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe know there is much more to do but we are determined to make sure the NHS is the safest in the world.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Medical negligence in the NHS keeps harming and killing patients because governments and health service bosses have not acted on 24 years\u2019 worth of warnings, MPs have said. In a scathing report published on Friday, the public accounts committee (PAC) excoriates the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) and NHS England for allowing the<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":43182,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[51],"tags":[311,3140,7340,1229,22625,2396,637],"class_list":{"0":"post-43181","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-health","8":"tag-england","9":"tag-medical","10":"tag-negligence","11":"tag-nhs","12":"tag-persisting","13":"tag-warnings","14":"tag-years"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43181","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=43181"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43181\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/43182"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=43181"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=43181"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=43181"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}