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Health and Social Care Bill

I had not intended to speak on the amendment, but I am so peeved at some of the Government’s reaction on the previous amendment that I want to draw a parallel between this amendment and Amendment No. 29. I want to return to the issue of a risk-based regulatory system. If we are running such a system, it is no good concentrating just on the provider side of the equation. You can do more damage to people in a community if you fail to assess them or you fail to assess the total need for services in that area. That is a greater risk than the failure of individual providers. We really need to get this point across. It is that failure that presents a great risk to individuals living in a community. We will do only half the job if we are to regulate, in considerable detail, the quality of the providers but then say that the assessment of needs is down to the SHAs and the Secretary of State, or the local authority and the Secretary of State, whether it is to do with an individual or a community. We have to do better than that if we are trying to put a piece of legislation in place for the future regulation of social care and healthcare. I ask the Minister to go back to her colleagues and think seriously about this, because we cannot just leave it to SHAs. As I see it, that was never the intention in the Secretary of State’s response to the original consultation document.