Paul Flynn – 2015 Parliamentary Question to the Department of Health

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Paul Flynn on 2015-10-15.

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what assessment he has made of the Care Quality Commission’s recent progress in meeting its inspection programme’s targets.

Ben Gummer

The Care Quality Commission (CQC) is the independent regulator of health and adult social care providers in England. The CQC is an executive non-departmental public body accountable to the Secretary of State for the efficient and effective discharge of its functions, duties and powers. The Department monitors CQC’s financial and operational performance and risks, including progress with recruitment of inspectors, at a general and strategic level through regular formal and informal accountability meetings. Ministers and the Permanent Secretary also hold regular meetings with the Chair and Chief Executive of the CQC and its Chief Inspectors.

The CQC has advised that it expects the inspections of NHS acute hospitals to be completed as planned by the end of March 2016 and the inspections of the remaining NHS Hospitals by June 2016. Further planning is required for the independent health sectors to enable the December 2016 commitments to be met.

The CQC is currently behind the planned trajectories to have rated all adult social care and general practitioners and out of hours services by 30 September 2016. The time it has taken to both recruit the required numbers of inspectors and to ensure they are fully trained to conduct inspections has contributed to the current position. The CQC is considering what steps it can take to bring the programme back on track.