Health and Care Bill

Debate between Baroness Altmann and Baroness Merron

Lords Hansard - Part 2 & Committee stage
Wednesday 26th January 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Merron (Lab)]

My Lords, it is essential that we get the arrangements for the Care Quality Commission right throughout the Bill, and I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, for trying to do that through these amendments. If the health and social care provided is to be of the highest standards, we must ensure, through the powers of scrutiny and review in your Lordships’ House, that we enable the watchdog to have the proper tools and framework to achieve that, so I support the amendments.

As the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, emphasised, this is about putting the responsibility in the right place to ensure that a key inspectorate can do an independent job and support proper integration and delivery. I hope the Minister will accept the good sense in these amendments.

[Baroness Altmann (Con)]

Can I briefly ask my noble friend whether part of the thinking behind the current wording might be that the remit of the CQC may need extending? For example, when it comes to private operators of social care, the CQC currently does not have the power to look at the financial stability of those operators. Is this provision perhaps based on the thought that the Secretary of State may need to widen the remit and powers of the CQC? If not, we will be returning to this at some point.