Health and Social Care Bill

Needs assessments are of course a very important part of the process of ensuring that patients and service users receive the services that they need. As was discussed in Committee in the other place, Clause 4(2) states that an activity may be a regulated activity if it involves or is connected with the provision of health or social care. Needs assessments may therefore already be prescribed as regulated activities, as they are connected with the provision of health and social care. Indeed, our suggested first registration requirement in the current consultation document—noble Lords will by now be well aware of it, as I mention it fairly regularly, if not in every speech—would specifically require that registered providers ensure that people have their health and/or social care needs assessed. I hope that that answers part of the point that the noble Baroness, Lady Murphy, was making. Amendment No. 30 therefore seems to duplicate what the Bill already allows. This issue was discussed at some length in Committee in the other place on 15 January 2008. After the clarification given by my honourable friend Ben Bradshaw that needs assessments are within the potential scope of registration with the new commission, a similar amendment was withdrawn. I am sorry that my noble friend is peeved with the Government. We have agreed to take away some of his amendments and consider them and I expect that, in the next month, we will be having discussions across the Committee about how we might reach a satisfactory conclusion. Amendment No. 31 would remove the clarification that regulated activities can include the supply of staff who provide care. That question, raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Barker, is a legitimate one. Such services would include, for example, those agencies that provide domiciliary care staff, which are registered with CSCI under the Care Standards Act 2000. Clause 4 is drafted widely, as we are consulting on the exact activities that will be within the scope of regulation. We have therefore included the supply of staff who provide or are connected with the provision of health or social care, to allow us to consult on which activities should be regulated. As set out in our ongoing consultation, we had envisaged that most care services currently required to be registered with the Healthcare Commission and CSCI would continue to be covered by registration with the new Care Quality Commission. In any system there is a need to draw a boundary, but we believe that the definitions of health and social care that are contained in the Bill set a sufficiently wide boundary to work within to allow for flexibility for future models of social care. With that clarification, I hope that the noble Baroness will now be content to withdraw the amendment.