Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask Her Majesty's Government how many Care Quality Commission personnel have been dispatched to the front line during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Care Quality Commission (CQC) is committed to supporting its colleagues who wish to undertake a different role to support the national effort in combatting COVID-19. As of 30 April 2020, the CQC has 101 colleagues with a formal external loan agreement. It has released 18 colleagues to the Department, 16 to NHS Improvement, one to Public Health England and one to Public Health Wales. It has released an additional 65 colleagues under local agreements to organisations including National Health Service trusts, general practitioner practices and pharmacies. In the majority of cases they are undertaking a frontline role. The CQC paused its routine inspection programme on 16 March 2020. This has freed up around 2,300 specialist advisors, who are not the CQC’s employees but can be called upon to support their inspection programme alongside clinical duties, to focus on frontline work.