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Select Committee · Public Accounts Committee

Costs of clinical negligence

Status: Open Opened: 10 Jul 2025 18 recommendations 9 conclusions 1 report

The PAC in its 2025 scrutiny the Department of Health and Social Care’s (DHSC) annual report and accounts 2023-24 called on government to reduce tragic incidences of patient harm. The PAC found it unacceptable that DHSC had yet to develop a plan to deal with the cost of clinical negligence claims, with so much taxpayers’ …

Clear

Reports

1 report
Title HC No. Published Items Response
64th Report - Costs of clinical negligence HC 1234 30 Jan 2026 27 Responded

Recommendations & Conclusions

2 items
14 Recommendation 64th Report - Costs of clinical neglige… Rejected

Insufficient use of NHS data resources for patient safety insights and improvement.

It is generally accepted that learning from past incidents is fundamental to improving patient safety, but the 2025 Dash review found that insufficient use is made of the NHS’s data resources to generate insights and support improvement.28 NHS England told us that although it aims to learn from litigation and …

Government response. The government disagrees with establishing a national system for sharing data, stating that existing data sharing arrangements and patient safety data are already in place.
HM Treasury
15 Recommendation 64th Report - Costs of clinical neglige… Rejected

Lack of centralised learning causes repeated patient safety incidents across trusts.

Written evidence submitted to us raised concerns about a lack of centralised learning leading to incidents being repeated across multiple trusts.31 When asked what it was doing to improve systemic learning from patient safety incidents, NHS England told us it had a “variety of mechanisms” but did not provide any …

Government response. The government disagrees with establishing a national system for sharing data, stating that existing data sharing arrangements and patient safety data are already in place.
HM Treasury

Oral evidence sessions

1 session
Date Witnesses
20 Nov 2025 Elizabeth O'Mahony · Department of Health and Social Care, Helen Vernon · NHS Resolution, Professor Aidan Fowler · NHS England, Samantha Jones · Department of Health and Social Care View ↗

Correspondence

4 letters
DateDirectionTitle
21 May 2026 From cttee Letter to the Permanent Secretary at the Department for Health and Social Care …
12 Jan 2026 To cttee Letter from the Chief Financial Officer at NHS England relating to the Committe…
15 Dec 2025 To cttee Letter from the Permanent Secretary at the Department for Health and Social Car…
15 Dec 2025 To cttee Letter from the Permanent Secretary at the Department for Health and Social Car…