Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, how many people undertake quality assurance in the NHS outside of clinical commissioning groups.

We do not hold information centrally on the number of people working in the National Health Service who have a quality assurance role.

However, the fundamental standards set out the standards against which care should not fall and all providers are expected to have systems and processes in place to assure themselves that they are assessing, monitoring and improving the quality and safety of their services.

The Care Quality Commission (CQC) is responsible for the inspection and regulation of quality of all healthcare providers and its findings are published together with a performance rating. Where a provider’s performance falls below the fundamental standards the CQC has specific powers to take appropriate action.