Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what assessment his Department has made of the relationship between hand hygiene compliance levels across the NHS and rates of trust-assigned MRSA bacteraemia in 2015.

As hand hygiene is known to be an important part of a robust approach to infection prevention and control the Department’s guidance to the National Health Service on infection prevention and control was strengthened last year. However, a national assessment for 2015 is not available as information on hand hygiene compliance is not collected centrally. Auditing of hand hygiene is a local responsibility.