Part of Oral Answers to Questions — Health – in the House of Commons at 11:30 am on 27 November 2012.
Andy Burnham
Shadow Secretary of State for Health
11:30,
27 November 2012
Last week, official statistics revealed that 7,134 nursing jobs had been lost under the coalition—almost 1,000 of them in the last month on the Secretary of State’s watch. The very next day, the Care Quality Commission warned that 16% of hospitals in England are not meeting the CQC standard for adequate staffing levels. Is this not prima facie evidence that the NHS and patients are not safe in his hands? Will he urgently intervene to stop the job losses?
The Care Quality Commission (CQC) is the independent regulator of health and adult social care providers in England and it is responsible for developing and consulting on its methodology for assessing whether providers are meeting the registration requirements.
Secretary of State was originally the title given to the two officials who conducted the Royal Correspondence under Elizabeth I. Now it is the title held by some of the more important Government Ministers, for example the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs.
