Fiddling figures from NHS hospitals will become a criminal offence, Jeremy Hunt, the health secretary, is to announce.
The Daily Telegraph reported that NHS managers and hospital trusts could be held criminally liable as part of a response to the Mid Staffordshire scandal. Penalties for manipulating statistics on waiting times and death rates could include seven-figure fines and jail terms.
Hunt said: "This is about a transparent, honest and accountable NHS. Patients and the public should be confident that they can trust information about how hospitals are performing, and a culture of honesty and accuracy will help those organisations drive up standards of care.
"Like me, the public has a deep and abiding affection for the NHS, but scandals such as Mid Staffordshire have affected trust in it. We need to get that trust back."
The new law is being considered in response to the Francis inquiry, which examined the deaths of up to 1,200 patients in Mid Staffs. Ministers will this month set out a range of new initiatives to prevent a repeat of the scandal.
It follows several recent accusations that hospitals have recorded causes of deaths wrongly in an attempt to obscure high death rates. There have also been allegations from nurses that they have been asked to manipulate waiting time statistics.
Hunt said: "If NHS Trusts are caught deliberately manipulating that information, whether waiting times or death rates, they need to be held to account."
The paper quoted a source close to Hunt, who claimed that official figures had been manipulated "rarely but consistently for many years".
"We feel strongly that if NHS trusts are caught acting fraudulently about their performance on areas such as death rates or waiting times, they should be criminally liable.
"The future NHS will have a more open culture, with better information for patients and the public. We're determined that information must be credible and provided on a basis that is honest and consistent."
Guardian
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