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F151

Complaints to MPs

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

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

DeliveryDHSC and NHS England say in progress (Feb 2026)Department of Health and Social Care states no delivery position (Feb 2015)

Recommendation, verbatim from the inquiry

●Inquiry recommendation

MPs are advised to consider adopting some simple system for identifying trends in the complaints and information they received from constituents. They should also consider whether individual complaints imply concerns of wider significance than the impact on one individual patient.

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 May 2024, the Thirlwall Inquiry legal team noted that the recommendation had been accepted in principle, recording that the government had stated it was not for ministers to advise individual MPs on complaint systems but that correspondence could be shared with regulators with informed consent (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 in part · 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 principle.
It is not for the Government to advise individual MPs on the systems they employ to identify the wider significance of individual complaints about health and care services. That said, the Department of Health recognises the invaluable insights which can be gained from letters written to MPs. Without wanting to suggest to MPs how they handle their own business, the Department would be willing to highlight the scope – for MPs who desired it or believed it appropriate – to identify themes and patterns in complaints by sharing correspondence with regulators (for example the Care Quality Commission, NHS Trust Development Authority and Monitor) using informed consent, and to gain intelligence about patient experience in their constituency’s health and care services by building strong relations with their local Healthwatch organisations. The Department would be willing to work with regulators and any interested MPs – while respecting their position as elected office holders- to share best practise and advice.

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 in progress · 27 Feb 2026

No further update. Please see response to the recommendation in Hard Truths, as set out in the Thirlwall Inquiry’s comments.

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 “Not yet actioned”. Table row: section 18.2 No. 151, PDF page 495.

●Department of Health and Social Care states no delivery position · 11 Feb 2015

No further update is required. Please see response to the recommendation in Hard Truths

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 Members of Parliament, 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 in principle by the Government.

In the January 2014 Hard Truths report, the Government said it was not for it to advise individual MPs on the systems they employed to identify the wider significance of individual complaints about health and care services. The Government did, however, say that MPs could share correspondence with regulators with informed consent.

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 does not colour its Extent of Implementation cell for this recommendation green; it leaves the cell uncoloured where a recommendation was rejected, where evidence of implementation was insufficient, or where steps had been taken but implementation was not yet complete. Table row: section 16.2 No. 151, PDF page 463.

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.