My Lords, I bring this amendment before the Committee because, as we all know, there are huge numbers of very frail people, usually older people, often with multiple conditions, in our hospitals and care homes, and indeed in the community now. The numbers are growing. For all sorts of reasons—I think that some of them could be tracked back to the European working time directive—nurses are doing more and more complex tasks in the care that they provide, some of it electronic, that very often removes them from the day-to-day care of some of these very frail people. The same applies in care homes. The care that is provided is very often not provided by qualified nurses but by healthcare assistants or care assistants. There are many of those people who are fantastically caring. They have a natural ability to relate to the patients that they deal with or the residents in care homes. However, a lot of the dreadful cases that we read about in the newspapers take place because unqualified and unregistered care assistants are looking after people without the necessary training and without the necessary standard of care being insisted upon. This is extremely worrying.
We have heard a lot of about dehydration or malnutrition and about a lack of dignity and respect. That is terrible, whoever is providing the care, but it is even worse somehow if the care is provided by people who are neither registered nor trained adequately and cannot be blamed for the fact that complex and difficult care situations are thrust upon them and they are landed with residents that they do not know how to care for adequately.
The amendment asks HEE to establish and maintain a register of qualified healthcare assistants and care assistants. If we could get there, we would then begin to have a remedy for some of the awful cases that we read about. We would know that people were fit to practise under the register and that there would likely be fewer cases of what can, unfortunately, amount to abuse.
When this system goes wrong in our country, we often learn that it is due to people who are not trained, qualified or registered being given enormous responsibilities. I would be pleased to know if the Minister agrees with me that this amendment would be of enormous benefit to patients and residents.