Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what steps he is taking to support people in care homes who receive unexpected (a) telephone and (b) management fees bills.

Care home residents who purchase or arrange their own care are protected by consumer law.

Under the Health and Social Care Act 2008, all providers of regulated activities must register with the Care Quality Commission (CQC) and meet a set of Fundamental Standards of safety and quality, below which care provision should never fall.

The Fundamental Standards were introduced on 1 April 2015. They set out the basic requirements that providers should always meet and outline the outcomes that services users should always expect. The CQC monitors, inspects and regulates services against the Standards and publishes its findings.

The Standards include a Duty of Candour, which requires providers of care to be open and transparent with users of services about their care and treatment and to address complaints promptly and fairly.

The CQC has a range of enforcement powers it can use in the event that it considers providers not to be meeting the Standards.

On 2 December, the Competition and Markets Authority announced that it will conduct a market study into care homes for older people. The study will look closely at reports of potentially unfair practices and contract terms in some care homes to assess how widespread these concerns are, how they are affecting residents and whether they are likely to breach consumer law.