Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, for what reasons the deadline of the end of 2017 for Public Health England to publish data on hand gel usage in NHS trusts has not been met.

We recognise the importance of this ambition. Public Health England (PHE) has carried out some initial analysis with available data, however, currently the data is incomplete and would not give a true reflection of usage of hand gel.

The Department is continuing to work with PHE and NHS Improvement to determine methods to obtain hand gel data and produce a hand hygiene indicator underlying the critical link between hygiene and infection prevention.

Preventing infections is a priority for the Secretary of State and the Department published a revised code of practice setting good practice on hand hygiene compliance and strengthened the Infection Prevention and Control and antimicrobial stewardship framework for healthcare providers. The Department is also working with our partners across the health and social care system, including the Care Quality Commission, to ensure that consideration of best practice in hand hygiene policies remains a focus of inspections in acute trusts.