Sarah Wollaston – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department of Health

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Sarah Wollaston on 2016-06-20.

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what steps he plans to take to ensure nurses are consulted on his Department’s future policies after the proposed closure of the Nursing, Midwifery and Allied Health Professions policy unit in his Department.

Ben Gummer

The Department leads the health and care system in England, working closely with a range of organisations on whose expertise it draws, including the nursing and midwifery expertise in NHS England and Public Health England. The Department’s approach to ensuring that nurses are consulted about future policies is to flexibly access professional advice from a wide range of sources, including arms-length bodies, regulators, stakeholders and professional bodies.

The Department’s policy teams will establish new networks and relationships with stakeholders and partners and collaborate with the Chief Nursing Officer (CNO) to ensure systems are in place to secure advice when developing evidence based policy. These changes do not affect the role of the CNO, who as CNO of the Department already advises, and will continue to advise all Ministers and the Department on the range of nursing and midwifery issues.

The Department is changing the way it works to deliver its essential work for the Government while achieving efficiency savings. All of the changes we are making through the resulting DH2020 programme are being done transparently and communicated to staff.