Clause 13 - Commission for health improvement: inspections and investigations
NHS Reform & Health Care Professions
4:30 pm
Mr John Hutton (Minister of State, Department of Health; Barrow and Furness, Labour)
In our earlier debates the hon. Member for North-East Hertfordshire raised his concern about who has responsibility for inspecting independent providers providing services to NHS patients. You, Miss Widdecombe, need no introduction to the subject; I remember you speaking eloquently on it in previous Committees.
I shall not detain the Committee long on these amendments. I hope that they substantially meet some of the recent concerns expressed by Opposition Members. We are trying to preserve consistency and continuity and to ensure that the public interest is properly safeguarded. The amendments place CHI's new inspecting functions on broadly the same footing as its existing functions. The commission already has these powers of inspection in relation to its existing clinical governance reviews of independent sector
providers. The amendments allow it to exercise its new inspecting functions in relation to independent sector providers of NHS services in exactly the same way. In that sense they promote consistency and continuity.
However, there is one important difference; I hope that the Committee will bear with me while I explain it. If the commission finds that services provided by an independent provider are of an unacceptably poor quality or that there are serious failings, the amendments will not allow it to recommend that the Secretary of State take special measures in relation to those failing independent sector providers.
We should not lose sight of the fact that such providers are not accountable to or managed by the Secretary of State. A different set of arguments applies in relation to NHS units, on which there is clearly a direct accountability arrangement. Failure of an independent sector provider to provide services of the right quality should ultimately be a matter for local commissioners to respond to once the commission has identified a quality problem with those services.
The amendment provides continuity and consistency but we have decided, in the interests of common sense, to ensure that the appropriate action consequent on such a negative report from the commission is for local commissioners to respond, not the Secretary of State directly. He is not in a direct position to influence the service provided by the independent sector provider.