Clause 42
Health and Social Care Bill
1:30 pm
Ben Bradshaw (Minister of State (Health Services; Minister for the South West), Department of Health; Exeter, Labour)
The hon. Gentleman said that he wanted to retain the role for the review of value-for-money elements, but that would be excluded under the amendment. It would restrict the scope of Care Quality Commission reviews simply to the quality of provision. I understand his desire to extend the remit of Monitor, but I would not be in favour of restricting the reviews of the commission in that way, and nor would the commission, I believe, given what we heard during our evidence session.
Of course, the reviews will look at the quality of provision. Subsection (4) sets out that assessments will be conducted by
“reference to such indicators of quality”
set out by the Secretary of State, or delegated to the commission to determine. The reviews will need to look at more than the quality of services. For example, when assessing local services we want greater emphasis to be put on how well they are working together to achieve overall outcomes, and to see whether they reflect the needs of their local populations. We will talk later about commissioning, but the reviews may consider the commissioning record of a primary care trust and how well it is meeting the needs of local people. Those issues seem to go beyond the strict definition of quality in the amendment, which is the main reason why we wish to resist it. We will discuss the role of Monitor at greater length later, but I point out to the hon. Gentleman that Monitor covers only foundation trusts, not all registered providers, and this is not just about NHS care.