Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, if he will commission a national alert system on security-related issues and individuals who may post a significant present or potential threat to NHS staff, NHS service providers and NHS property assets.

From April 2017, the functions of NHS Protect have changed. Work is underway to create a new special health authority, called the NHS Counter Fraud Authority. The focus of the new organisation will be exclusively on tackling fraud, bribery and corruption across the National Health Service and the wider health group. The new authority will not have a remit for security management work.

Employers in the NHS are responsible for assessing risks to staff and addressing those risks. Any abuse of NHS staff is unacceptable and should not be tolerated. Any form of abuse should be reported and trusts should have no hesitation in involving the police. Comprehensive and detailed guidance is available to NHS employers to assist them in assessing and managing the risks accordingly and involving the police where appropriate. A separate NHS national alert system is therefore unnecessary.

The standards for security management work are imposed through the relevant clauses of the standard commissioning contract between commissioners and providers. It is commissioners’ responsibility to ensure that security management standards are met in accordance with the contract. NHS England is responsible for the standard commissioning contract and the clauses within it.