My Lords, one could scarcely fail to notice that when the Minister talked about the very welcome aspects of the things that this new regulator is going to do, they were, as others have said, mostly focused on the improvement of social work. There is no disagreement about this. Everybody wants to improve and support social work. However, the actual functions of a regulator always come very far down the Minister’s list when we talk about registration and the fitness to practise of social workers. Fitness to practise involves not being fit to practise and social workers being struck off a register, which is a very important part of what a regulator does.
Any regulatory system for social workers should ensure parity of esteem for the social work profession with that accorded to other public service professions entrusted to undertake high-risk professional tasks. For me, that is an argument for keeping the system
within the Department of Health, which regulates many of those other professions. Any regulatory system should also provide stability for social workers. One thing that we have not given social workers in recent years is any form of stability. Some of us here are old enough to remember CCETSW before we had the GSCC, and all the controversy surrounding that. Then we went to the HCPC. That lack of stability has added to the problems of the workforce and the severe current retention problems with which we should all be concerned.
Any regulatory system must also be cost-effective to both central and local government and not be provided for at the expense of resources needed for service delivery, about which my noble friend Lady Howarth—I call her my noble friend—has already talked so eloquently. It must not result in the deterrent of unacceptably high registration fees falling on very poorly paid social workers. I am still not convinced about that. It seems to me that the HCPC already does parity, stability and being cost-effective. We could leave regulation there, along with consulting the HCPC to undertake some improvements, which I am sure it would be willing to do, and with the existing oversight of the Professional Standards Authority and a responsibility to the Privy Council, which is also where the HCPC sits. If we did that, and had a separate improvement agency, which, as the noble Lord, Lord Warner, said, could be set up very quickly, and given the great amount of agreement from everybody in your Lordships’ House and across the piece, why does not the Minister at least give that serious consideration over the summer?