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.”
Wall Street opens lower after Trump nominates Kevin Warsh as next Fed chair – as it happened
Newsflash: Donald Trump has decided to nominated Kevin Warsh as the next head of America’s central bank, the Federal Reserve.In a post on Truth Social, the US president says he has “no doubt” that Warsh will be “one of the GREAT Fed Chairmen, maybe the best”.That’s not a surprise, given the president’s hints last night that he would choose “somebody that could have been there a few years ago” (Warsh lost out in 2017).But as we’ve been blogging this morning, while Warsh now favours lower interest rates he’s seen as less likely to push for aggressive cuts than some other candidates.Trump says:I am pleased to announce that I am nominating Kevin Warsh to be the CHAIRMAN OF THE BOARD OF GOVERNORS OF THE FEDERAL RESERVE SYSTEM
British American Tobacco accused of helping North Korea fund terrorism in lawsuit
Hundreds of US military service members, civilians and their families have filed a lawsuit for unspecified damages against British American Tobacco (BAT), one of the world’s largest tobacco companies, and a subsidiary, claiming the company spent years illicitly helping North Korea fund terrorism weapons that were used against Americans.BAT formed a joint venture in 2001 with a North Korean company to manufacture cigarettes in the country. The venture quietly continued, a 2005 Guardian investigation revealed, even as the US government publicly warned North Korea was funding terrorism and imposed sanctions on the country. Amid mounting international pressure in 2007, the company claimed it was ending business in North Korea, but secretly continued its operation through a subsidiary, the US justice department said in 2023. BAT’s venture in North Korea provided about $418m in banking transactions, “generating revenue used to advance North Korea’s weapons program”, Matthew Olsen, then the justice department official in charge of its national security division, said during a 2023 Senate hearing
Donald Trump expected to nominate Kevin Warsh as US Federal Reserve chair
Donald Trump is expected to nominate the former Federal Reserve governor Kevin Warsh as its next chair amid an extraordinary attempt by the president to tighten his grip on the US central bank and flout its longstanding independence.Trump told reporters on Thursday that he planned to announce his choice for chair of the Federal Reserve on Friday morning, hinting that “a lot of people think that this is somebody that could have been there a few years ago”.That fuelled speculation that he had chosen Warsh, who was considered for the Fed chair in 2017. There was a surge of bets on Warsh to be nominated on the Polymarket predictions site, where his chances rose to 94% on Friday.The Financial Times reported on Friday that Trump was preparing to nominate Warsh, citing three people familiar with the matter
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AstraZeneca to invest £11bn in China after rowing back on UK expansion
Britain’s biggest drugmaker AstraZeneca is to invest $15bn (£11bn) in China, it announced during Keir Starmer’s visit to the country, just months after cooling on plans for expansion in the UK.The Cambridge-based company said it would spend the money by 2030 to expand medicines manufacturing and research and development in China, where it already has a big presence. It includes the construction of a $2.5bn research hub in Beijing, which was announced last March.During the first visit by a British prime minister to China in eight years, Starmer said the move would help AstraZeneca to grow into a bigger business, thereby supporting thousands of UK jobs
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