Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask Her Majesty's Government what plans they have to classify crowding in NHS hospital Emergency Departments as Serious Incidents.

The National Health Service Serious Incident framework of 2015 describes the criteria and definitions that providers and commissioners should apply when considering whether an event in healthcare should be investigated as a serious incident.

The decision to declare a Serious Incident should be informed by the potential for an investigation into the event to generate new insight into preventing future risks, as well as the impact of the event on those involved.

The framework discourages the use of prescriptive lists of types of event to identify serious incidents as this leads to automatic investigations into events that offer little new learning.