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F273

Information to coroners

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

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

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

Recommendation, verbatim from the inquiry

●Inquiry recommendation

The terms of authorisation, licensing and registration and any relevant guidance should oblige healthcare providers to provide all relevant information to enable the coroner to perform his function, unless a director is personally satisfied that withholding the information is justified in the public interest.

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

The Department of Health and Social Care and NHS England stated in commentary from September 2024 that the recommendation was implemented and closed, noting that Schedule 5 of the Coroners and Justice Act 2009 empowers coroners to order disclosure of relevant evidence (DHSC and NHS England, Feb 2026). Earlier, in May 2024, the Thirlwall Inquiry legal team found evidence of implementation, observing that the government had accepted the proposal in principle in 2013 but declined to incorporate information sharing into Care Quality Commission registration requirements (Department of Health response, Nov 2013; 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.

About this summary
This recommendation applies across many organisations. The record above reflects central policy activity; adoption in individual organisations may vary.

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.
All relevant information should be shared with coroners to ensure that they are able to perform their roles fully. The Coroners and Justice Act 2009 states that, ‘It is an offence for a person to do anything that is intended to have the effect of (a) distorting or otherwise altering any evidence, document or other things that is given, produced or provided for the purpose of an investigation … (b) preventing any evidence, document or other thing from being given produced or provided for the purposes of such an investigation or to do anything that the person knows or believes is likely to have that effect’.
The Government does not agree, however, that this should be required in terms of the registration of providers by the Care Quality Commission the function of which is to ensure that providers meet a much wider set of basic requirements to ensure patients’ effective and safe treatment and care.

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 say completed · 27 Feb 2026

Schedule 5 of the Coroners and Justice Act 2009 confers a power on the coroner to order disclosure of any evidence, including the provision of a written statement and any documents relation to the matter relevant to the investigation.

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. 273, PDF page 570.

●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 healthcare providers, 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 agreed that relevant information should be shared with coroners to ensure they were able to perform their roles fully, but did not think this should be required in terms of registration of providers by the Care Quality Commission.

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. 273, PDF page 524.

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.