Safety concerns raised by clinical staff, including the submission of several hundred incident report forms at the troubled Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust, were either “lost in a black hole” or ignored, a panel of MPs has been told.

A highly critical report by former regulator, the Healthcare Commission, in March, concluded that the lack of staff and equipment at the trust made emergency care there unsafe (BMJ 2009;338:b1141, doi:10.1136/bmj.b1141).

Witnesses at an evidence session of the parliamentary health select committee’s inquiry into patient safety on 3 June were asked what staff had done to raise the alarm through official channels about the extent …