Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask Her Majesty’s Government how they will ensure that proposals in the Deregulation Bill to create a statutory duty on the Care Quality Commission to consider economic growth when carrying out its functions will not impact on the protection of the public.

Care Quality Commission (CQC) inspects health and adult social care services in order to ensure they provide people with safe, compassionate, high quality care. The effect of the Deregulation Bill is that regulators, including the CQC, will have regard to economic growth and ensure regulatory action is necessary and proportionate. CQC, as an arms-length body of the Department, is able to brief Parliamentarians on how it carries out its functions, including the new duty to have regard to economic growth.