Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what assessment he has made of the effectiveness of implementation of safe staffing guidance in the NHS.

The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) guidance on safe staffing for nursing in adult inpatient wards in acute hospitals was published in July 2014 and guidance on safe midwifery staffing for maternity settings was published in February 2015.

The NICE safe staffing guidance is part of our overall approach to safe staffing which is intended to help make the National Health Service the safest healthcare system in the world and its effectiveness will need to be assessed as part of that ambition in the longer term. Many front-line professionals and NHS organisations have found the guidance a helpful support to their decision-making.