Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if she will make representations to Cabinet colleagues on enabling the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman to initiate investigations into the NHS.

Whilst responsibility for any changes to the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman (PHSO) lies with the Cabinet Office, we are not persuaded about the need for the PHSO to initiate investigations into the National Health Service. This could result in reduced contact with individual complainants, reduced PHSO capacity to handle individual complaints, increased costs, and the potential for the PHSO to stray into policy matters and duplicate the work of the Select Committee. The PHSO may already investigate systemic issues where individual complaints suggest more widespread problems and the healthcare system itself already includes organisations that can initiate investigations, including the Health Services Safety Investigations Body, who investigate patient safety concerns across England to improve NHS care at a national level.