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Health and Social Care Bill

moved Amendment No. 54A: 54A: Clause 16, page 8, line 39, at end insert— ““( ) The functions of the Commission in relation to health care acquired infections shall be adequately and separately funded by the Secretary of State.”” The noble Baroness said: We return to the subject of healthcare-acquired infections. This is a probing amendment about the new function that the CQC will have to ask whether resources will be made available to it to take on the additional work of monitoring healthcare-acquired infections. The reason for the amendment is twofold. It is undeniable that the Government attach a degree of political importance to the issue that far outweighs the importance of other matters, such as nutrition and so on. It is therefore highly likely that with the political imperative behind it, the commission may well find that, whatever it may think, it has very early in its life to devote the bulk of its resources to that. The amendment is intended to ensure that the new commission, especially during its formative period, is not so skewed by an emphasis on healthcare-acquired infections that it does not begin to set up standards of work in the other areas—particularly social care and mental health. Amendment No. 55A, which is also in this group, attempts to discover whether there will be consultation with people involved in social care on the code of practice on healthcare-acquired infections. The Government have already said that the new commission’s work on healthcare-acquired infections will start in 2009-10, and therefore there will be some pressure for a code of practice to be consulted on fairly early. As a result of previous legislation, the NHS already has longstanding experience of the development of codes of practice on healthcare-acquired infection but, as this new regulatory body will be in charge of small care homes and so on where there is an incidence of healthcare-acquired infection, it is important to see what is appropriate to them in their work. It is completely different from what is appropriate in a major acute hospital. I want to probe those two issues. I beg to move.