Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, on what date he was first made aware that 35 sacks of mail held by NHS Shared Business Services had been destroyed.

This matter was brought to the Department’s attention on 26 May 2017 as part of the National Audit Office’s investigations into clinical correspondence handling at NHS Shared Business Services. The National Audit Office’s report (Investigation: clinical correspondence handling at NHS Shared Business Services, 27th June 2017) states that an internal investigation by NHS Shared Business Services (NHS SBS) found that “… NHS SBS had destroyed 35 sacks of records in line with NHS England’s policy that medical records can be destroyed 10 years after the death of the patient.”