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Health and Social Care Bill

Before the Minister continues, I want to raise two points. She said that the quality indicators would be for the English health service. What about social care? We always come back to this. Does she mean health and social care in England? That is my first question. Secondly, we are again talking about indicators of quality. I ask Members of the Committee to look at Clause 42(4) and (5). Subsection (4) states, "““a body’s performance is to be by reference to such indicators of quality as the Secretary of State may devise or approve””." That means that if we had a real dictator of a Secretary of State who thought that he knew the lot, he would devise and approve all the quality indicators, but if we had a really weak Secretary of State who was not terribly interested in this and was due to be moved to another position, under subsection (5) he could direct the commission to, "““devise indicators for the purposes of subsection (4) and submit them to the Secretary of State for approval””." This is a muddle and it is not clear how independent the Care Quality Commission is going to be in devising indicators of quality.