Health: Private and Voluntary Care

My honourable friend the Minister of State, Department of Health (Ben Bradshaw) has made the following Written Ministerial Statement. The Government are currently undertaking a major programme to reform health and adult social care to improve the quality and safety of services. They are committed to making major changes to the current regulatory and system management frameworks covering health and adult social care, and are legislating to that purpose in the current session. This programme of change will put patients and service users at the forefront of driving forward improvements to services through increased choice, improved commissioning, and new regulatory arrangements. In 2009 we plan, subject to the passage of legislation, to replace the current regulatory bodies covering health and social care with a new single regulator—the Care Quality Commission which will build on the work of the Healthcare Commission, the Commission for Social Care Inspection, and the Mental Health Act Commission. However, certain changes to the current regulatory system for private and voluntary healthcare are needed earlier to ensure that we can continue to regulate this sector effectively during the run-up to the wider changes to the regulatory and system management frameworks. These changes are designed to: remove a small number of private and voluntary healthcare services from regulation by the Healthcare Commission where the risk to the public is small; and ensure that there is clarity about how certain regulations should apply to private and voluntary healthcare. We therefore present proposals to amend the regulations governing private and voluntary healthcare. We are satisfied that the amendments proposed in this consultation will deliver improved healthcare outcomes which are consistent with the risk-based approach to regulation we envisage in our wider and longer term system reforms. The consultation document has been placed in the Library and copies are available to honourable Members from the Vote Office. It is also available on the department's website at www.dh.gov.uk/en/Consultations/Liveconsultations/index.htm. The consultation will end on 10 June 2008. After analysis of the consultation responses, we will make a decision on whether or not to proceed with these proposals, and to lay the new regulations before Parliament.