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Health and Social Care Bill

This has been an interesting debate. Members of the Committee will not be surprised to hear that I thought the noble Baronesses, Lady Howarth and Lady Meacher, put their finger on some of the key points. Both amendments deal with the inspections that the Care Quality Commission will carry out as a vital part of fulfilling its functions both to ensure compliance with registration requirements and in some cases to contribute to its review activities. I sympathise with the intention behind Amendment No. 103 to allow the ability to set specific triggers for commission inspections, and the remarks of my noble friends Lady Jones and Lord Campbell-Savours. Neither I nor my noble friend the Minister has at any point used the term ““light touch””. It is not part of the terminology that we use to describe what the Bill seeks to do, and it is not part of the regime that we are hoping the commission will establish. The person who used the right word was the noble Baroness, Lady Barker; it is ““proportionate””. A similar amendment was debated in the other place, and my honourable friend the Minister for Health was at that stage able to provide sufficient reassurance for the amendment to be withdrawn. However, I appreciate that people remain concerned that certain circumstances—for example, a change of management or ownership of the social care provider—can have a huge impact on the quality of care. But they may not have—they may improve the quality of care and could well be triggers for a new regulator to want to carry out an inspection. Other triggers might include serious incidents, staff turnover or sudden increases which often indicate that something else is going wrong. I understand the concern that without the commission recognising such triggers, serious problems might not be spotted. That would of course be of particular concern if inspections otherwise happened only in a fixed cycle. However, I should stress to Members of the Committee that we are certainly not intending to set fixed cycles for inspections. Indeed, we are committed to giving the regulator greater freedom to develop a proportionate approach to regulation, building on the good work of the current commission’s in the case of social care—