Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, if he will take steps to improve the transparency and accountability of the NHS complaints process; and if he will take steps to prevent vexatious complaints being made.

The Government, as part of its response to the Francis and Clwyd/Hart reviews, has established a Complaints Programme Board to bring together a range of partners across the care system to implement actions that will lead to improvements in complaints handling by the National Health Service. A significant area of its work programme is to improve transparency, governance, and the sharing of good practice.

We do not consider it appropriate generally to seek to discourage any complaints about the NHS. However, individual NHS organisations would be expected to have published information on how they handle unreasonably persistent complainants, and to deal with such complaints in a proportionate and fair manner.