Health and Social Care Bill

moved Amendment No. 53A: 53A: Clause 16, page 8, line 11, at end insert— ““( ) impose requirements on registered social care service providers to comply with codes of practice issued by the General Social Care Council under section 62(1)(b) of the Care Standards Act 2000 (c. 14) (codes of practice).”” The noble Baroness said: I suspect that by now the Minister may regret the fact that healthcare-acquired infections have been given such a status within the Bill, because it is an invitation for those of us who believe that there are other matters of equal, if not greater, importance to go along the same route. Amendment No. 53A deals with a code of practice for employers in social care. I propose that the General Social Care Council’s code of practice for employers of social care workers should be given the same status under Clause 16 as the code of practice on healthcare and associated infections. My reason for doing so is that the GSCC codes of practice, which are drawn up under Section 62 of the Care Standards Act, have become industry standards within social care, and there is a requirement for them to be issued to social care workers and to those who employ them. Those codes of practice have been drawn up over the years as a result of extensive consultation. There are two codes, one for social care workers and one for their employers. Currently, the standards set out within the codes are taken into account when inspections of providers are conducted against national minimum standards. They have been a central driving force in setting standards of social care. Therefore, the proposal is that, instead of reinventing the wheel and requiring the CQC to set up specific compliance criteria, the commission should take on those codes of practice, which are industry standards for social care. Amendment No. 65 concerns a different but related matter. It adds the General Social Care Council to the list of bodies in Clause 35 to which the Care Quality Commission must refer information in the event of an enforcement action being taken against a regulated social care provider. This is about ensuring consistently high standards within the social care workforce and among the bodies that employ them. To put it another way, it is also an important means of ensuring that those who engage in poor practice to the extent that they have an enforcement notice issued against them do not have escape routes by which they can get round the legislation. The General Social Care Council is a key body in relation to the registration of the social care workforce. That workforce is highly mobile and it will become increasingly so as much of social care is provided on the basis of short-term contracts. Therefore, it is important to ensure that, where people do not meet standards and have an enforcement action issued against them, they cannot move easily between employers to the extent that they get lost. That is a particular concern in social care. Amendment No. 66 is there simply to enable me to make the point that a large percentage of the social care workforce in the third sector is employed by charities. If it were the case that a charitable body was an employer and was consistently failing to meet agreed standards, there is a case to be made that the Charity Commission ought at least to be notified of that. This is one of the arguments that people in the third sector often come up against. They often have an argument thrown at them, particularly by the NHS, that all they have to do is register with the Charity Commission and that the Charity Commission is interested only in narrow management functions. That is not true; the Charity Commission has a role to play in the overall standards of the work of charitable bodies. So, although it may not seem so on the face of it, there is a thought running through the three amendments about ensuring that there are consistent standards across the different sectors. I beg to move.