Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if he will make it his policy to ensure that care providers rated as inadequate by the Care Quality Commission are prohibited from trading; and what assessment he has made of the potential merits of introducing harsher penalties for those providers.

The Care Quality Commission (CQC) has a range of proportionate enforcement powers, which allow action to be taken to ensure the safety of service users where concerns on quality or safety are identified.

The CQC’s special measures policy ensures that providers found to be providing inadequate care significantly improve. Once a service is in special measures, the CQC will re-inspect within six months to confirm that sufficient progress has been made. Where it has not, the CQC will begin to take action to prevent the service from operating, either by proposing to cancel their registration or vary the terms of their registration. If concerns are sufficiently serious, the CQC can cancel a registration.