Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether his Department’s planned consultation on adult social care will include consideration of unfair care home contracts.

Any instance of unfair and harmful terms and conditions in care home contracts are unacceptable. The issue was highlighted by the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) in the final report of their care home market study published on 30 November 2017.

It is right that the CMA is taking enforcement action where appropriate and we welcome that the CMA will provide guidance on consumer law for the adult social care sector. The CMA report set out important recommendations about what can be done to better protect care home residents from unfair practices.

The Government will set out its response to the CMA’s recommendations on this issue.