NHS medical negligence persisting in England ‘despite 24 years of warnings’

Medical negligence in the NHS keeps harming and killing patients because governments and health service bosses have not acted on 24 years’ worth of warnings, MPs have said.In a scathing report published on Friday, the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) excoriates the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) and NHS England for allowing the cost of mistakes to balloon to £3.6bn a year.Between them, the two bodies have failed to take “any meaningful action” to address the problem in England, despite four PAC reports from as early as 2002 advising them to do so, the committee says.“It feels impossible to accept that, despite two decades’ worth of warnings, we still appear to be worlds away from government or [the] NHS engaging with the underlying causes of this issue,” said Geoffrey Clifton-Brown, the chair of the influential cross-party committee.He cited “unacceptable stasis” surrounding maternity care as an example of inaction that is persistently harming patients and costing ever larger sums of taxpayer funding. Reports have been published since 2015 into maternity scandals in Morecambe Bay, East Kent, and Shrewsbury and Telford. Another inquiry is continuing into childbirth care in Nottingham.Last year, acute concern about maternity care across the NHS in England prompted Wes Streeting, the health secretary, to order an inquiry, led by Valerie Amos, into maternity care.“The PAC finds that, as government’s liability for clinical negligence quadrupled over 20 years (£60bn in 2024-25), the [Department of Health and Social Care] is unable to show any meaningful action taken to address this and the NHS has not done enough to tackle the underlying causes of patient harm,” it said.The government’s liability for clinical negligence has quadrupled in real terms since 2006-07 and reached a record high of £60bn in 2024-25, the report said.“This is a swelling accounting of profound suffering,” Clifton-Brown said. “Each case can represent unspeakable devastation for the victims involved and the overall picture is of a system struggling to keep its patients safe from avoidable harm.”Evidence the PAC collected during its inquiry showed that the NHS was “overwhelmed” with the sheer number of recommendations various bodies had made to improve patient safety. Several safety watchdogs, official inquiries and coroners regularly suggested changes.The PAC found in the report that: The £3.6bn cost of medical negligence is diverting funds away from frontline NHS care. Lawsuits involving brain-damaged babies can take up to 12 years to settle. Some patients sue because hospitals refuse to tell them what went wrong with their care. “These mind-boggling clinical negligence costs are a horrific symptom of an NHS that has been neglected and mismanaged for too long,” said Helen Morgan, the Liberal Democrats’ health spokesperson.While the Conservatives pushed the NHS “to the brink”, Labour was doing too little to improve it, Morgan said. Its decision to remove a ringfence around dedicated funding for improving maternity care was “nonsensical”, she added.The PAC echoed the findings of several previous reports by urging the NHS to be much more open with patients and relatives when errors have occurred, and apologise sooner, to reduce both claims and costs. The NHS must also overhaul its “confusing and unresponsive” complaints system in order to produce a more compassionate system, which would also save money, it added.A report published on Thursday about patient safety globally ranked the UK 21st of the 38 OECD member countries studied by experts at Imperial College London and Patient Safety Watch.Globally, deaths among people with severe mental illness such as bipolar disorder and schizophrenia were “a major concern” and too many people die as a result of medical treatment. The UK scored poorly for neonatal deaths and patients suffering complications when they undergo surgery.A DHSC spokesperson said: “This government inherited an NHS that was failing too many people.“We have taken rapid action to strengthen patient safety – overhauling the Care Quality Commission, rolling out Martha’s rule and Jess’s rule so patients can get a fresh clinical review, and introducing hospital league tables to drive improvement.“We have also brought in new maternity safety measures, are conducting an urgent investigation of failings and are establishing a taskforce, so every mother can have confidence in NHS care once again.“We know there is much more to do but we are determined to make sure the NHS is the safest in the world.”