Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, if he will introduce conditions for outsourced NHS work by the private healthcare providers to waive any right to commercial confidentiality and abide by the obligations of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 for the production of relevant documents and safety and performance data.

The Justice Select Committee has considered the issue of public services being delivered by private contractors and its recommendation was that it would be preferable for the Freedom of Information Act to not formally extend to these private providers. The Government agreed with the Committee's recommendation that properly enforced contractual transparency provisions provide a more practical basis to ensure transparency than the formal extension of the Freedom of Information Act.