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Health and Social Care Bill

I intervene briefly in support of my noble friend Lady Jones of Whitchurch. I previously drew the attention of the Committee to the fact that my mother is in a nursing home and I toured a lot of homes prior to placing her there. Indeed, this weekend, I am going back to the Lake District and will probably visit a couple more homes. I feel passionately about this business of inspections. Ministers have simply failed to understand the scale of concern on this issue among many of my honourable friends in the House of Commons and among Members of this House. The only protection and assurance that someone in a nursing home, without a relative to visit them regularly, can have regarding the quality of service provided by that home is from the knowledge that the home is regularly inspected. I strongly object to a reduction in inspections. The theory is that because a home achieves a top score for one year, it might as well not be visited the next year because it did well before. That is a nonsense because the conditions inside that home could have changed. The manager could have changed, as could the carers, the kitchen staff, the owner of the home or the shareholding control, whereby new pressures are exerted by a new management style. I see nothing in this legislation that even begins to dismantle the arrangements recently brought in governing the inspection of these homes. All the organisations I talk to have expressed their concern. The only people who seem to have no concerns about this are in the Government. I believe that this part of the Bill is driven by people in the Treasury who have no idea what they are talking about. If a Treasury official comes up with an idea to make an economy in the use of taxpayers’ money, it is quickly given to civil servants in order to implement a change in the legislation and thus secure that economy. It is driven through the House of Commons on the back of a whipped vote. It comes into the House of Lords and is considered in committees like this one. The only people who have an opportunity of even knowing what is happening are those who attend the Second Reading debate in the House of Commons or committee sessions here. The proposal is put into legislation and the next thing we know, we see more and more newspaper articles drawing attention to the fact that an even higher number of homes are found to be operating to poor standards. I object very strongly to any reduction in the number of inspections that take place. My noble friend might respond by saying that there will not be a reduction. However, I do not know the source of the term used by my noble friend, ““light touch””. I am sure she has taken it from somewhere. ““Light touch”” must be a term used by someone in authority at some point who thought that the light-touch inspection of homes would satisfy the public’s expectation of what we want to see when an inspection is carried out. I am sorry, but a light touch is not what I want and it is not what my colleagues want. I believe that Ministers should go back to their department and the Treasury and take a new look at the whole area. Again, I strongly object to what is happening. I have tabled a Question for Written Answer to which my noble friend may have the opportunity of replying. It deals with a home in north-east England. I want to know about the inspection record of that home. What happened there, and how often was it inspected? I understand that in a state of panic it had to be closed down and people were prosecuted. So the question I have put down asks about the incidence of inspection over recent years. It will be interesting to see when the Answer comes through to what extent that home was inspected, how long it took to find out what was happening there, and why it subsequently became a scandal reported on national television. The amendment of my noble friend is very important because in some ways it addresses the issues that I am raising.