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Health and Social Care Bill

My Lords, I agree with those noble Lords who have said that this is a critical amendment. I do not understand how more than one register will ensure a uniform standard across the whole of the NHS. There is a real problem at the moment with healthcare assistants being used as substitutes, rather than having ““delegated”” tasks, as in the wording of this amendment. I am concerned about relying overly on the employers themselves. We have seen in the nursing home sector that this has failed. Where there has been substandard care, nursing homes have not got rid of those staff about whom they have had questions and those who have been commissioning services from those areas have not been able even to close down nursing homes because they often have not known where else they could move the residents of that area. In the mainstream hospital sector, it is down to an individual nurse to decide what she delegates to a healthcare assistant. The beauty of having a statutory register is that there will be clear expectations of what healthcare assistants can and cannot do and the level to which they should be trained, with clarity of roles and values, which I believe will also increase their own self esteem, and their own sense of occasional involvement in their role in clinical care. It has been suggested that it would be in the interests of unions to have such a statutory register. I fear that there has even been confusion in the minds of some people between the role of a trade union and the role of a regulatory body. It will be very important that a register is completely separate to any type of union activity. When the Minister comes to answer, I would be grateful if he could explain how the standards to be set by a voluntary registration process will be overseen and monitored, and what levers the Government would have to improve and extend the criteria required by a voluntary register of those who are registered on it, in order to increase standards.