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F95

Information sharing

Mid Staffs Inquiry · Report of the Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust Public Inquiry · Issued 6 February 2013

Government responseDepartment of Health and Social Care: Accepted (Nov 2013)

DeliveryDHSC and NHS England say completed (Feb 2026)Department of Health and Social Care says in progress (Feb 2015)

Recommendation, verbatim from the inquiry

●Inquiry recommendation

As the interests of patient safety should prevail over the narrow litigation interest under which confidentiality or even privilege might be claimed over risk reports, consideration should also be given to allowing the Care Quality Commission access to these reports.

Mid Staffs Inquiry, Report of the Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust Public Inquiry · 6 Feb 2013 Source PDF →

Published evidence summary

AI-generated evidence summary

In February 2026, the Department of Health and Social Care and NHS England reported that the recommendation was implemented and closed, stating that NHS Resolution shares relevant information as part of the Care Quality Commission's inspections regime (DHSC and NHS England, Feb 2026). Previously, in May 2024, the Thirlwall Inquiry legal team found that the recommendation had been implemented, citing earlier reporting that information was shared under the regulator's inspection regime (The Thirlwall Inquiry legal team, May 2024).

AI-generated summary of the record on this page, checked by a second model and automatic checks, 26 Sep 2026.

Report-level response context

Government responded via "Hard Truths: The Journey to Putting Patients First" (2014), a single document covering all 290 recommendations with a blanket acceptance. Individual recommendation responses were not broken out.

Government response

●Department of Health and Social Care · Accepted · 19 Nov 2013

Speaker not recorded. Source: Department of Health, Hard Truths: the Journey to Putting Patients First, volume 2 (Cm 8777-II), November 2013

Accepted.
In response to the Caldicott Review, Information: To Share or Not to Share (2013), the Department of Health stated that health and care professionals must make decisions about how information is shared and used in the best interests of people and patients using the five rules of confidentiality set out in new Health and Social Care Information Centre’s guidance, Guide to Confidentiality in Health and Social Care (2013).
The NHS Litigation Authority also supports the view that the patient safety should prevail over litigation interests. It actively supports explanations and apologies and will never refuse to indemnify a member because they have apologised. It shares information which supports learning from claims with the NHS and makes such information available to members and where appropriate, other stakeholders. The NHS Litigation Authority is sharing relevant claims information as part of the Care Quality Commission’s inspection regime. The NHS Litigation Authority is also putting in place an information sharing agreement with regulators to enable us to share relevant information.

Extract from: Hard Truths: The Journey to Putting Patients First. Volume Two of the Government Response to the Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust Public Inquiry: Response to the Inquiry's Recommendations

Site note: This is volume two of "Hard Truths: The Journey to Putting Patients First" (Cm 8777-II), the government's response to the Inquiry's 290 recommendations, published by the Department of Health on GOV.UK on 19 November 2013 and dated to that day here. The PDF the row links to is the accessible edition, whose title page reads "January 2014". The Department of Health has been the Department of Health and Social Care since January 2018. The volume says it includes accounts from each of the national organisations the recommendations name, but it does not mark which passage each organisation wrote, so every row is filed under the Department that published it.

Delivery

●DHSC and NHS England say completed · 27 Feb 2026

The Thirlwall Inquiry has noted action taken following the conclusion of the Inquiry.

NHS Litigation Authority, now NHS Resolution, share relevant information as part of the Care Quality Commission’s inspections regime.

From: The Thirlwall Inquiry: Review of Implementation of Recommendations from Previous Inquiries into Healthcare Issues (version dated April 2025)

Site note: DHSC and NHS England's own account of progress, supplied to the Thirlwall Inquiry in September 2024 and printed in the Inquiry legal team's Review of Implementation of Recommendations from Previous Inquiries into Healthcare Issues (version dated April 2025, published 27 February 2026). It is not a finding of the Inquiry. Their reviewed extent of implementation reads “Implemented - Closed”. Table row: section 18.2 No. 95, PDF page 470.

●Department of Health and Social Care says in progress · 11 Feb 2015

The NHS Litigation Authority shares relevant claims information (with due regard to data protection and patient confidentiality) as part of the Care Quality Commission’s inspections regime and where appropriate with other regulators. The NHS Litigation Authority has published a set of data sharing principles which sets out the basis upon which it will share data whilst appropriately maintaining confidentiality. The overriding principle is to share information to support patient safety.

From: Culture Change in the NHS supporting Annex (annex to Culture change in the NHS: applying the lessons of the Francis Inquiries)

Site note: This is the supporting annex published on 11 February 2015 with "Culture change in the NHS: applying the lessons of the Francis Inquiries" (Cm 9009), attached to the GOV.UK page as "Culture change in the NHS supporting annex". The annex has no title page; that title is GOV.UK's and the PDF's own. Its table has four columns (No., Recommendation, Hard Truths Government response, Progress update), and the row carries the Progress update cell. No column says which organisation wrote an update, so the row is filed under the Department of Health (now the Department of Health and Social Care), which published it.

Site note: The Inquiry addressed this recommendation to the NHS Litigation Authority (now NHS Resolution), not to the Department of Health. The annex gives this update in the Department's publication and does not say who wrote it, so the row is the Department's report of the progress made on it.

What other bodies have found

In their own words. These do not change the delivery statement above.

●Thirlwall Inquiry legal team · 15 May 2024

This recommendation was accepted by the Government. In its February 2015 Culture Change report, the Government said that the NHS Litigation Authority shared relevant information as part of the Care Quality Commission’s inspections regime.

From: The Thirlwall Inquiry: Review of Implementation of Recommendations from Previous Inquiries into Healthcare Issues (version of 15 May 2024)

Site note: The Thirlwall Inquiry legal team's own notes on implementation, from its Review of Implementation of Recommendations from Previous Inquiries into Healthcare Issues (version of 15 May 2024). The review colours its Extent of Implementation cell for this recommendation green, which it uses to mark evidence, identified by the legal team, that a recommendation has been clearly implemented. Table row: section 16.2 No. 95, PDF page 435-436.

How this page is built

The recommendation and the government responses are verbatim from primary documents. Delivery statements and other bodies' findings are shown in their own words, each with its source. The summary is written by this site and labelled as such. The Index does not paraphrase sources or characterise intent; it records what has been published.