Written evidence to be reported to the House

Part of Health and Social Care Bill – in a Public Bill Committee at 12:15 pm on 8 January 2008.

Alert me about debates like this

Anna Walker: We do not overwhelmingly need them. The hygiene code has an improvement notice process attached to it, which is not the process in the new legislation but is actually very important; it allows us to go in and say, “Look, there is a problem on infection control here, and this is what we want you to put right”. So, it is then working with the grain of, “Let’s get this issue right”. If they do not do the work on the improvement notice, we then follow it up at a later stage. At the moment, we have to make a recommendation to the Secretary of State for further action on that.

We are making the point that we have a lot of powers at the moment, given that to get where you need to be is a question of encouraging people to put in the improvement that is needed and, if they are really recalcitrant over that, only then moving to the powers that penalise them.