Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what his Department's policy is on inspections by the Care Quality Commission of local authorities' commissioning of care services.

The Care Quality Commission (CQC) is the independent regulator of health and adult social care providers in England. The CQC does not have the power to inspect local authorities but has a power to carry out a special review of the commissioning of adult social care services by local authorities. It has been agreed that any such review should only happen in exceptional circumstances where there is evidence that commissioning is contributing to poor standards of care for service users. Any such review is subject to the agreement of the Secretary of State for Health and the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government.

Ministers’ offices have reported that they have received no letters, meetings and meeting requests since 1 January 2015 about inspections by the CQC of local authorities' commissioning of care services.

A search of the Department’s Ministerial correspondence database has found one item of correspondence received since 1 January 2015 about inspections by the CQC of local authorities' commissioning of care services.