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."

"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."

Medical negligence in the NHS continues to harm and kill patients because governments and health service leaders have not acted on 24 years of warnings. The cost of clinical mistakes has risen to about £3.6bn per year, while the government's liability for clinical negligence has quadrupled in real terms to £60bn in 2024-25. Persistent failures in maternity care have produced multiple high-profile scandals and ongoing inquiries since 2015. Repeated warnings over two decades have not generated meaningful action to address underlying causes of patient harm. The resulting suffering and growing taxpayer costs represent significant systemic and accountability failures.

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