Recommendation F177: Openness in public statements
From Report of the Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust Public Inquiry, published 6 February 2013.
Recommendation
Any public statement made by a healthcare organisation about its performance must be truthful and not misleading by omission.
In brief (written by this site)
In February 2026, the Department of Health and Social Care and NHS England stated that implementation was ongoing, pointing to the statutory duty of candour and NHS Standard Contract requirements to ensure submissions are not misleading (DHSC and NHS England, Feb 2026). Earlier, in May 2024, the Thirlwall Inquiry legal team found that the recommendation was implemented, noting that section 92 of the Care Act 2014 created an offence of making available false or misleading information (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.
About this summary
This recommendation applies across many organisations. The record reflects central policy activity; adoption in individual organisations may vary.
Government response
Accepted.
Accountability is a key leadership role and effectively means organisations operate effectively and with openness, transparency and candour at all times.
The NHS Leadership Academy’s guide, The Healthy NHS Board 2013 – Principles for Good Governance describes the principles of high quality governance that all care providers should be implementing. The board of a healthcare organisation itself will be held to account by a wide range of stakeholders, for the overall effectiveness and performance of the organisation that it oversees, and the extent to which the board and the organisation operates with openness, transparency and candour. One key part of accountability is the need for the board to ensure that published figures on all aspects of the quality of care are accurate and provide an honest and fair account to commissioners, regulators, patients and the public.
As set out in recommendation 182, the Government is putting in place additional measures to ensure that certain key information is truthful and not misleading. The Care Bill contains provisions to introduce a new criminal offence applicable to care providers that supply or publish certain types of false or misleading information, where that information is required to comply with a statutory or other legal obligation.
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 in progress (27 February 2026)
Please see response to recommendation 21 on the statutory Duty of Candour and the requirements of the NHS Standard contract to ensure submissions are not misleading.
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 – Ongoing.”. Table row: section 18.2 No. 177, PDF page 511.
Department of Health and Social Care says in progress (11 February 2015)
As set out the updated response to recommendation 182, the Government is putting in place a new criminal offence applicable to any care providers who supply, publish or otherwise make available certain types of information which is false or misleading, where that information is required to comply with a statutory or other legal obligation. This offence also applies to senior individuals in a provider organisation if they consent to or connive in the offence. The aim is to bring this offence into force in early 2015.
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 healthcare providers, 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 Guidance referred to the NHS Leadership Academy’s 2013 guide as requiring the board of a healthcare organisation to ensure that published figures on all aspects of the quality of care were accurate and to provide an honest and fair account to commissioners, regulators, patients and the public.
The Government created the offence of supplying, publishing or otherwise making available false or misleading information in section 92 of the Care Act 2014.
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 colours its Extent of Implementation cell for this recommendation green, which it uses to mark evidence, identified by the legal team, that a recommendation has been clearly implemented. Table row: section 16.2 No. 177, PDF page 477.
Source
Responsible bodies
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