My Lords, I remind the Committee that I have form in this area as the person who chaired the committee that set up the General Social Care Council, as the first chair of the General Social Care Council and as the chair of the Professional Standards Authority which oversaw the demise of the GSCC and the transfer of regulation to the HCPC. There are, as we know, terrible problems facing social work and social workers at the moment, so to be discussing these structural changes now is rather like rearranging the deckchairs on the “Titanic”. That said, I support the idea of getting very much more independence for the regulator of social work. The separation between regulation and improving standards is important. That is a very well-established principle. The Department of Health is promoting that principle as we speak, building on the Professional Standards Authority’s paper Rethinking Regulation. All this applies to other health regulators, as Ministers well know.
Independence is extremely important. The oversight of the current regulator, the HCPC, by the Professional Standards Authority—I am no longer its chair, but I still declare an interest—is a vital part of assuring not only its independence but its performance by scrutinising its fitness-to-practice cases and referring them to the High Court where it has failed to protect the public. I remind the Committee that the purpose of regulation is to protect the public.
I wonder whether the Minister has considered the disruption element of the Government’s proposals. The HCPC has only just finished, this month, dealing with the legacy fitness-to-practise cases it inherited from the General Social Care Council. If a new regulator is set up, it will have to deal with the legacy cases of the HCPC, which will mean two different systems with two different sets of staff and consequent expense. Cost is another area that we all have very to be very concerned about with these issues, and I raised it at Second Reading.
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