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Health and Social Care Bill

As usual, the noble Earl was admirably brief and to the point. As he will know, the transfer of responsibilities for children’s social care to Ofsted has already happened in the Education and Inspections Act 2006, in which I think we were both engaged. We were very concerned to ensure that the regulator who was created would concentrate on all aspects of children’s services. Indeed, that is in line with the overall policy objectives and the recent reorganisation of departments to reflect the Government’s wish to concentrate on children’s services and education in a coherent way. At the time, that seemed to be the right way to go in that, if you put together children’s services and education coherently, it made sense for their regulation to be in the same place. Therefore, the key purpose of this Bill is to integrate the regulation of health and social care, reflecting the integration of the services locally and supporting innovation in joined-up service delivery. Noble Lords have, over a long period, advocated that, and indeed this was the way that health and social care was progressing. The proposal underlying the creation of the new commission is that it will build on CSCI’s good work. The Bill broadly comes from CSCI’s existing legal function and will be able to build on that.