Clause 51 - Annual reviews
Health and Social Care(Community Health and Standards) Bill
2:45 pm
Mr Chris Grayling (Epsom and Ewell, Conservative)
I echo some of what the hon. Member for Sutton and Cheam says. Some mutters have come from the Minister of State about effectively providing a justification for the producer side of the NHS. [Interruption.] He is muttering under his breath at this moment.
The truth is that we believe in an independent inspectorate. One part of the complex jigsaw puzzle that will provide real improvements to health care in this country is a genuinely independent inspectorate. Some of the things that the Government have done in establishing CHAI are right. They have gone a step in the right direction, but their good work is being let down by the millstones that are still left hanging around the neck of the new inspectorate, including the fact that it cannot ultimately escape the veto, judgment and insistence of the Secretary of State on the criteria that the Secretary of State chooses, and the fact that it is still tied in to a flawed rating structure.
I accept many of the points that the hon. Member for Cardiff, Central made. We do not want to see measurement and assessment disappear from the NHS. Everyone in the NHS, as in any walk of life, should be subject to some degree of scrutiny over what they are doing. But we happen to think that the current scrutiny is skewed much too much towards process rather than quality of care and work. We would like to address that. The hon. Gentleman will recall that earlier in the debate I used the example of the eight-minute arrival time for ambulances.