Heidi Alexander – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department of Health

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Heidi Alexander on 2016-03-08.

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, whether the Care Quality Commission has conducted an impact assessment of the proposed changes to the contract of Experts by Experience.

Ben Gummer

The Care Quality Commission (CQC) is the independent regulator for health and adult social care. The CQC is responsible for its own staffing requirements, including any decisions on contracts around the supplying of experts by experience for its inspections of providers.

In line with Cabinet Office approvals processes, the Department:

– gave approval for the CQC to invite tenders for the Experts by Experience programme; and

– having sought and received clarification of the business case from the CQC, the department approved the business case, to enable the CQC to proceed with finalising new contracts for Experts by Experience.

Regulatory impact assessments for the Experts by Experience programme were carried out by the CQC as part of the development of the new regulatory framework in 2014.