Business of the House

Nick Smith Excerpts

Thursday 24th November 2011 Commons Chamber

[Sir George Young]

My hon. Friend is quite right that sometimes action is not taken. The answer is that the Care Quality Commission has a range of enforcement powers at its disposal and his message is that it should use those more often to address the problems he has described. The CQC has a range of enforcement powers that it can use to bring a provider back into compliance and in the case of the most serious failings it can cancel a provider’s registration, which would simply result in that provider’s closure. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Health has emphasised to the CQC the importance of driving up standards and using all the powers at its disposal to do that.

[Nick Smith (Blaenau Gwent) (Lab)]

May I press the Leader of the House? Given the shockingly low number of affordable housing starts—just 454 in the six months from April, a figure that was revealed the day after the Government’s much-trumpeted housing strategy—may we have a debate in Government time on the crisis in our construction industry?

[Sir George Young]

I hope that the hon. Gentleman will welcome the statement made by my right hon. Friend the Minister for Housing and Local Government on Monday, which addressed the parlous state of the housing and construction industry we inherited, the action we are taking to bring public land back into use, the incentives we are giving to local authorities to develop and the help we are getting through building societies and banks for first-time buyers. We are taking effective action to kick-start the sluggish housing economy that we inherited.