My Lords, I first thank the noble Baroness, Lady Emerton, for an interesting set of proposals and I am grateful for her thoughtful introductory remarks. I agree that ensuring the capability of the health and care support workforce is vital to delivering high-quality care to patients and service users across both health and social care settings. The issue is how we achieve this. Key requirements for delivering high-quality care can best be achieved by providers having the right processes in place to ensure they have the right staff with the right skills and the right training to deliver the right care in the right way to patients and service users.
The idea of statutory requirements can seem an attractive means of ensuring patient safety, yet Robert Francis’s report demonstrates amply that this in itself does not prevent poor care. I confess that I was a little surprised by the vehement support of the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, for the idea of statutory regulation because it was an idea that his Government resisted for some time. I suggest that they resisted it for a number of reasons and they came to the conclusion that it is not as self-evident as some like to make out. That is certainly this Government’s position. This is not, as the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, suggested, a laissez-faire attitude on the part of the Government. As we made clear in Patients First and Foremost, the initial response to the Francis inquiry, the Chief Inspector of Hospitals will ensure that all hospitals act to make sure that all healthcare assistants are properly trained and inducted before they care for people. I suggest that this is an important step forward.
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The new Chief Inspector of Social Care will also ensure that all unregulated social care support staff have the induction and training that they need to meet their employers’ registration requirements, whatever those may be. The noble Lord suggested that money was at the root of the Government’s concern on this. No, it is not. The capability of care assistants and public confidence in them are our key concerns. Health Education England will work with employers to improve the capability of care assistants, including those in the care sector. In an earlier group of amendments, I mentioned the measures that we are taking to put these words into practice. There is an innovation fund, amounting at present to £13 million, for the training and education of unregulated health professionals. We are committed to a code of conduct and minimum training standards, as I have already mentioned.