It emerged on Wednesday that ministers had banned NHS hospitals from publishing risk assessments about how Brexit might affect them, allegedly because doing so could “put public wellbeing at risk”.
The Department of Health and Social Care has written to NHS trusts in England telling them not to put into the public domain their own analyses of the pitfalls facing them.
The department’s “advice” stops trusts from outlining how Britain’s departure from the EU might affect their non-clinical goods and services and staff from EU nations.
The move appears to be an attempt to thwart an attempt by the Health Service Journal website to obtain details of these possible impacts.
The HSJ disclosed on Wednesday that the DHSC has circulated guidance to trusts about how to respond to any request from it under freedom of information laws for sight of their risk assessment documents, telling them they must “not share this information”.