Oral Answers to Questions

Josh Fenton-Glynn Excerpts

Tuesday 7th January 2025 Commons Chamber

[Wes Streeting]

What the shadow Minister neglects to mention is that the Chancellor has protected the winter fuel allowance for the poorest pensioners, and she has also put in place the warm home discount to assist people with their energy bills throughout the winter. If the shadow Minister does not support the decisions that the Chancellor took at the Budget and ahead of the Budget to raise vital investment for our health and care services, that is fair enough, but then she needs to tell people which NHS services she would cut or which other taxes she would increase.

[Josh Fenton-Glynn (Calder Valley) (Lab)]

7. Whether he has made an assessment of the effectiveness of improvements made to the Care Quality Commission.

[The Minister for Secondary Care (Karin Smyth)]

In response to the report by Dr Penny Dash, we have made it clear that the CQC is not fit for purpose and requires significant reform. We have increased our oversight of the CQC to ensure implementation of the recommendations in Dr Dash’s review, and we will continue to monitor the CQC’s progress through this period of improvement. We are also supporting the swift and efficient recruitment of CQC leadership roles, including the new chief executive Julian Hartley, who started in December.

[Josh Fenton-Glynn]

It is inarguable that the CQC needs improvement. Many who run care services in local authorities have little confidence in its performance. Does my hon. Friend agree that we could go some way to improving how it is viewed by looking at the use of single-word assessments, which create undue stress for social services leads? They were raised by the Dash review as insufficient to support local authorities to improve, promoting box-ticking over real improvement and giving little information to members of the public on the quality of social services provision.

[Karin Smyth]

My hon. Friend is right that confidence is the key word in the huge agenda that the CQC has to deliver. Dr Dash and Professor Mike Richards highlighted serious failings that need to be re-addressed. As one of our predecessors said, priorities are our language. Currently, a review of one or two-word ratings is not a priority, but it will be kept under review.