Accountability reigns

Following Winterbourne View there must be robust consequences for Boards of directors where the organisation they lead fails to give proper care. The Department of Health (DH) and the Care Quality Commission (CQC) committed to examine what powers they had to bring about those robust consequences, and what could be done to strengthen what they have. The Francis report, following Mid-Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust, highlighted that all directors of bodies coming under CQC should be fit and proper persons’, and powers of interventions be given to CQC if they were not. The DH considered additional prosecution powers. Norman Lamb MP, Minister for Care and Support, then consulted the opinion of interested parties on the combined proposals, including the independent healthcare sector, perhaps conscious that there is also much good experience to be garnered from the healthcare world. He proposed that there should be a new registration requirement covering the fitness of directors of Boards; and to improve the way existing sanctions are used to prosecute providers who failed to give proper care.