Recommendation F96: Information sharing
From Report of the Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust Public Inquiry, published 6 February 2013.
Recommendation
The NHS Litigation Authority should make more prominent in its publicity an explanation comprehensible to the general public of the limitations of its standards assessments and of the reliance which can be placed on them.
In brief (written by this site)
The Department of Health and Social Care and NHS England stated in September 2024 that the recommendation was complete, explaining that the former NHS Litigation Authority had published an explanation of the limitations of its assessment process on its website and had moved away from assessing against standards (DHSC and NHS England, Feb 2026). In May 2024, the Thirlwall Inquiry legal team noted that the government had accepted the recommendation and had recorded that the website explanation had been provided (The Thirlwall Inquiry legal team, May 2024).
AI-generated summary of the record on this page, checked by a second model and automatic checks, 26 Sep 2026. The record below is the sources' own words.
Government response
Accepted.
The NHS Litigation Authority has included a comprehensible explanation of the limitations of the standards and assessments process on its website. Following the publication of the NHS Litigation Authority’s Industry Review in January 2012, the NHS Litigation Authority has reviewed the standards and assessment process and advised members that it is moving away from assessment against standards to an outcome focus approach. This will support the NHS to learn from claims by sharing information and learning and through price incentivisation.
How this response relates to the recommendation
Site note: This is volume two of "Hard Truths: The Journey to Putting Patients First" (Cm 8777-II), the government's response to the Inquiry's 290 recommendations, published by the Department of Health on GOV.UK on 19 November 2013 and dated to that day here. The PDF the row links to is the accessible edition, whose title page reads "January 2014". The Department of Health has been the Department of Health and Social Care since January 2018. The volume says it includes accounts from each of the national organisations the recommendations name, but it does not mark which passage each organisation wrote, so every row is filed under the Department that published it.
Blanket government agreement does not establish acceptance or delivery by each addressee. Some response passages cover groups of recommendations.
Scope of the government response
Government responded via "Hard Truths: The Journey to Putting Patients First" (2014), a single document covering all 290 recommendations with a blanket acceptance. Individual recommendation responses were not broken out.
Delivery
DHSC and NHS England say completed (27 February 2026)
The Thirlwall Inquiry has noted action taken following the conclusion of the Inquiry.
The then NHS Litigation Authority included an explanation of the limitations of the standards and assessments process on its website. Following the publication of the NHS Litigation Authority’s Industry Review in January 2012, the NHS Litigation Authority reviewed the standards and assessment process and advised members that it was moving away from assessment against the standards.
Site note: DHSC and NHS England's own account of progress, supplied to the Thirlwall Inquiry in September 2024 and printed in the Inquiry legal team's Review of Implementation of Recommendations from Previous Inquiries into Healthcare Issues (version dated April 2025, published 27 February 2026). It is not a finding of the Inquiry. Their reviewed extent of implementation reads “Implemented - Closed”. Table row: section 18.2 No. 96, PDF page 470-471.
Department of Health and Social Care states no delivery position (11 February 2015)
No further update is required. Please see response to the recommendation in Hard Truths
Site note: This is the supporting annex published on 11 February 2015 with "Culture change in the NHS: applying the lessons of the Francis Inquiries" (Cm 9009), attached to the GOV.UK page as "Culture change in the NHS supporting annex". The annex has no title page; that title is GOV.UK's and the PDF's own. Its table has four columns (No., Recommendation, Hard Truths Government response, Progress update), and the row carries the Progress update cell. No column says which organisation wrote an update, so the row is filed under the Department of Health (now the Department of Health and Social Care), which published it.
Site note: The Inquiry addressed this recommendation to the NHS Litigation Authority (now NHS Resolution), not to the Department of Health. The annex gives this update in the Department's publication and does not say who wrote it, so the row is the Department's report of the progress made on it.
What other bodies have found
In their own words. These do not change the delivery statement above.
Thirlwall Inquiry legal team (15 May 2024)
This recommendation was accepted by the Government.
In the January 2014 Hard Truths report, the Government said that the NHS Litigation Authority had included a comprehensible explanation of the limitations of the standards and assessment process on its website.
Site note: The Thirlwall Inquiry legal team's own notes on implementation, from its Review of Implementation of Recommendations from Previous Inquiries into Healthcare Issues (version of 15 May 2024). The review does not colour its Extent of Implementation cell for this recommendation green; it leaves the cell uncoloured where a recommendation was rejected, where evidence of implementation was insufficient, or where steps had been taken but implementation was not yet complete. Table row: section 16.2 No. 96, PDF page 436.
Source
Themes and tags
Who has spoken
- Department of Health and Social Care
Response, delivery statement - DHSC and NHS England
Delivery statement - Thirlwall Inquiry legal team
Finding