Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether she has had recent discussions with officials in her Department on the potential merits of regulating staff who work in social care settings.

The Government keeps the health and care professions subject to statutory regulation under review and published a consultation, ‘Healthcare regulation: deciding when statutory regulation is appropriate’. While the Government’s view is that there is no immediate case to amend the groups which are regulated, the consultation asked how the powers to introduce and remove professions from regulation might be used in the future. Officials are currently analysing the responses to this consultation and the Government will publish its response in due course.