Health and Social Care Bill

The Minister has spoken about assured voluntary registration being available now. He has said that the Government will monitor it and, if gaps are revealed, would then reconsider statutory registration. It strikes me, first, that we need to know what the criteria are that would trigger moving from an assured voluntary register to a statutory register and, secondly, that these professional groups are in a Catch-22 situation. They have been seeking statutory regulation to drive up and maintain high standards of clinical care. They have been doing all that they can to maintain high standards of clinical care. If they carry on being able to maintain those high standards, gaps will not be revealed. The only way that gaps might be revealed is, in fact, if they drop their standards. It seems like a Catch-22 situation, but I think that I have probably misheard the Minister.