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F261

Information standards

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 state no delivery position (Feb 2026)Department of Health and Social Care says in progress (Feb 2015)

Recommendation, verbatim from the inquiry

●Inquiry recommendation

The Information Centre should be enabled to undertake more detailed statistical analysis of its own than currently appears to be the case.

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 September 2024 commentary published in February 2026, the Department of Health and Social Care and NHS England recorded the recommendation as superseded, referring to their response to an earlier recommendation (DHSC and NHS England, Feb 2026). In May 2024, the Thirlwall Inquiry legal team noted that the government had accepted the recommendation and recounted its prior updates on high-level data analysis (The Thirlwall Inquiry legal team, May 2024). The department had reported in February 2015 that the Health and Social Care Information Centre was reviewing its publications strategy to produce more thematic reports, following its initial acceptance in November 2013 (Department of Health response, Nov 2013; Department of Health, Feb 2015).

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.
The Health and Social Care Information Centre collects and publishes national data and statistical information in health and social care as required by the The Health and Social Care Act 2012. In doing so, the Health and Social Care Information Centre also has a role in undertaking high level analysis of data, where appropriate, to support the interpretation of information prior to its publication. For example in the preparation of the Summary Hospital- level Mortality Indicator. This is a useful function and the Health and Social Care Information Centre will continue to do this wherever appropriate.
The Health and Social Care Information Centre will also ensure that data which can be interpreted locally is available and in a format that would allow individual organisations to undertake that analysis. The Health and Social Care Information Centre does not provide local level interpretative analysis, rather it will continue to ensure that such information is available so that it can be used by local trusts and data intermediaries to add value by presenting the data in ways that are most useful to specific local audiences. This is in line with the Government’s Information Strategy, The Power of Information (Department of Health, May 2012).

Response document: 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 state no delivery position · 27 Feb 2026

Please see our response to recommendation 252 above.

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 “Superseded”. Table row: section 18.2 No. 261, PDF page 564-565.

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

The Health and Social Care Information Centre is currently reviewing its publications strategy to ensure that its outputs are providing relevant and useful statistics and analyses for customers and the public. As part of this review, it has started to produce more thematic reports, for example regarding health and care services for older people, which was published in June 2014.

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 Health and Social Care Information Centre (later NHS Digital), 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 the January 2014 Hard Truths Report, the Government said that Health and Social Care Information had a role in undertaking high level analysis of data to support the interpretation of information prior to its publication, but that it would not prove local-level interpretative analysis.

In the February 2015 Culture Change report, the Government said that the Health and Social Care Information Centre was reviewing its publications strategy to ensure that its outputs were providing relevant and useful statistics and analyses for customers and the public.

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. 261, PDF page 519.

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.