Fifty Years of Inquiries in the NHS

On 27 March 1969, Secretary of State for Social Services, Richard Crossman, made a statement to the House of Commons on the ‘Report of the Committee of Inquiry into the Ely Hospital, Cardiff’ (chaired by QC, and future Conservative Chancellor, Geoffrey Howe) which had been set up in 1967 to investigate allegations of ill-treatment of patients and of pilfering by staff which had been made by a nursing assistant employed at the hospital.  

There have been a large number of NHS inquiries over the last fifty years, sometimes known by names that still have great resonance within the health service and wider public such as Bristol, Shipman, and Mid Staffs.

The 50^th anniversary of inquiries in the NHS presents an important opportunity to ask some tough questions about their purpose, value and outcomes. Such questions include:  how far do the NHS, policy makers, politicians and others really care about the material contained within inquiry reports, and how serious is their stated commitment to act upon them? Furthermore, do inquiry reports actually enable the NHS to undertake proper and profound learning, and make significant steps towards trying to ensure that events do not repeat themselves?

This joint University of Birmingham, University of Manchester and Health Foundation project introduces material arising from an event hosted by The Health Foundation in November 2018 which focused on NHS inquiries in the fifty years following the Ely Report, which is generally considered to be the first modern NHS Inquiry.  Download a summary of the discussions at the symposium.  

At the symposium, presentations were made of some of the ideas to be published in a set of academic papers in a Special Edition of Political Quarterly in summer 2019, focusing on individual inquiries, and comparing issues such as culture, recommendations, and the role of the public across Inquiries.

Resources

A viewpoint on the website by Martin Powell and Kieran Walshe addresses a number of important issues such as the purposes of inquiries and what has been learned from them.