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Health and Social Care Bill

Amendment No. 5 would place a duty on the Care Quality Commission to report to Parliament each year setting out its proposed activities for the future financial year and how it intended to allocate its resources. I agree that the commission, as an independent body, must be held accountable for its activities. I also appreciate the concerns here to ensure that the commission will take account of its objectives, the importance of patient and public involvement and the importance of treating health, social care and mental health services equitably when it is allocating resources and developing its forward plans. However, there are a number of reasons why I do not believe that the amendment is needed. First, I agree that it is important that the Quality Care Commission sets out how it intends to use its resources. Of course, Clause 79 of the Bill already requires the commission to report annually to Parliament on how it has exercised its functions and what it has found as the current commissions do. These reports often include a forward look at plans for the coming year. The commission will, of course, also develop its business plan each year as the current commissions do. The current commissions also make their plans publicly available and I see no reason why this would not continue to be an appropriate mechanism for setting out the body’s plans in the future. In addition, Clause 77 requires the Care Quality Commission to publish a programme of the reviews, studies and other similar activities it intends to carry out in the following year. On the specific proposals in the amendment, we have already spoken about the objectives. The commission will need to have regard to its objectives in everything that it does, so its business plan will set out how it will fulfil its objectives. That is what a business plan is for. I disagree that it would be appropriate to ask the commission to distinguish between what resource it intends to allocate across health, social care and mental health. We are creating the Care Quality Commission to take an integrated approach to regulation as far as possible. Asking it to attempt crudely to allocate resources in this way would run counter to that approach. Finally, throughout the passage of the Bill there has been considerable debate on the involvement of the public and those who use care services in the work of the commission. We will be debating the issue at length later, I am sure, but at this stage I agree that we would expect the commission to make its methodologies on this publicly available. On the point of transparency, Clause 2(3)(f) makes reference to best practice and that the CQC should be transparent in its regulatory action. As I have explained, the new commission will make publicly available all the information suggested in the amendment about its planned activities. Given this and the pressures that there are already on parliamentary time—as we have rehearsed, we do not want to come back here and re-debate the Bill in two or three years time—I do not believe that additional requirements to report to Parliament are necessary.