Breast Implants

Grahame Morris Excerpts

Wednesday 11th January 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Lansley]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for what she said about the NHS. I think that before considering whether there is a cost associated with regulation and how it might appropriately be met, we should consider what is necessary to assure patients of safety and quality.

[Grahame M. Morris (Easington) (Lab)]

I welcome the statement, but may I caution the Secretary of State against placing additional burdens on the Care Quality Commission without providing it with additional resources? May I also urge him to heed the advice of my right hon. Friend the Member for Leigh (Andy Burnham), and pause to listen and reflect on what lessons can be learned and what safeguards can be provided for the future? I am thinking both of the protection of patients’ safety and of future NHS liabilities when surgical procedures or treatments are carried out by the private sector, which is likely to become more frequent as the privatisation provisions of the Health and Social Care Bill are implemented.

[Mr Lansley]

For reasons that I have already explained, the hon. Gentleman is simply wrong about that. It is nonsensical to attempt—as the editor of The Lancet did this morning—to compare the regulation of private providers of private care with that of private providers of NHS care. There is no comparison at all.

The CQC will inspect a sample of providers of cosmetic surgery to check that they are meeting registration requirements, and will undertake a number of unannounced inspections as part of that. We expect the inspections to be completed by the end of the month, and expect the CQC to have published its report by the end of March. It has confirmed that it has enough resources to undertake the inspections within its existing budget.