Examination of Witnesses

Part of Health and Social Care(Re-Committed) Bill – in a Public Bill Committee at 5:15 pm on 28 June 2011.

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Photo of Emily Thornberry Emily Thornberry Shadow Minister (Health) 5:15, 28 June 2011

I want briefly to go back to the CQC and HealthWatch, and then I want to ask about choice. If HealthWatch had been up and running  during the scandal at Winterbourne View, one of the things we would expect it to do would be to investigate the CQC’s failure properly to watch what was going on. HealthWatch might have decided that we should be looking not only at Winterbourne View but at large locked institutions for people with learning disabilities and that it is important that the CQC does a study of many organisations. That is a real-life situation happening at the moment. Let us think about the impact of that. With HealthWatch being a sub-department or committee of the CQC, would it not be subject to, for example, pressures from the CQC saying, “We’re 300 people short; we simply can’t do that.”? Do we not need the two organisations to be a little more separate, so that the CQC at the very least can be watched by HealthWatch?