Baroness Thornton writes for ePolitix.com on her forthcoming parliamentary question on which health agencies will be affected by cuts in government spending.
I think it is important that the government comes clean on which arms length bodies and health agencies will be affected by the cuts that are being planned, and we need to know how these decisions will be taken.
This is why I have put down a question to the minister in the House of Lords. It is the beginning of a process to hold the government to account on what they intend to do to organisations many of which are at the heart of patient safety and regulation of standards
My namesake at the Health Service Journal 2 June, Stephen Thornton, puts it well when he said:
"In what will be a vicious round of musical chairs for quangos and NHS management bodies in the next 12 or 18 months, beware of the unintended consequence of losing the scarce resource that has been painstakingly built up over the last decade"
In education – for example – the government have unilaterally decided to abolish the General Teaching Council – we have to ask about the future of bodies like the General Social Care Council and whether social workers will suffer the same fate.
Or will the CQC be the target? Patient safety could become seriously jeorparised if cuts to the CQC budget mean fewer staff out in the field inspecting hospitals and social care establishments. These are some of the issues I will be posing to the minister.
