Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether she has made an assessment of the potential merits of issuing carers' permits to support carers to (a) keep in contact with and (b) accompany patients in care settings.

In order to strengthen the requirements around visiting and accompanying in a range of health and care settings, we recently introduced legislation to make visiting and accompanying a Care Quality Commission fundamental standard of care. Settings will be inspected against this standard, which will come into force on 6 April 2024.