Regulation of Health and Social Care Professionals Consultation

for the appointment process to the CHRE itself, while retaining the final say, and
the ability to take the process back unto itself should the need arise.
10.17 There is a third option. Parliament could be given responsibility for appointing
CHRE’s Council members, which could be exercised by the Health Select
Committee or indeed, should it prove practical, by a Joint Committee on health
and social care professional regulation, as discussed in Part 2. Parliament has in
recent times taken more responsibility in relation to certain appointments. Most
recently, the Treasury Committee has been given statutory responsibility for the
appointment and dismissal of members of the Office for Budget Responsibility. In
certain circumstances, the Committee must consent to members being added to
or removed from this body. 12 However, such a system would only be practicable
for CHRE in the context of a general change in Parliament’s role in relation to
scrutiny of arms length regulators (see the discussion in Part 2). That in turn
would have significant resource implications for how Parliament undertook its
business. We therefore provisionally reject this option. This conclusion, however,
could appropriately be revisited should Parliament evince an intention to move
towards greater direct scrutiny of regulators.
10.18 We think that the appointment of non-executive members by the devolved
administrations is a useful and positive mechanism to express the devolved
administrations’ responsibilities for both health services and education, and
should be retained in either system.
10.19 As to the choice between Government or CHRE appointment of the other three
non-executive members, the arguments are, we think, finely balanced. But on
balance we provisionally propose that the Government should be given the
responsibility. The role of the Government in this respect can be seen as one of
the important links between the different regulatory systems – such as the
systems regulators and internal NHS processes – which should be retained.
Appointments would be made in accordance with the standards for appointments
to the health and social care regulators made by CHRE, and the process could
be delegated to CHRE itself.
10.20 A possible further stage would be to mirror the approach we have adopted for the
regulatory councils, by providing for the establishment of a constitution for CHRE.
The constitution would specify, amongst other matters, the size and composition
of its Council, how appointments will be made, the duration of membership,
mechanisms for the removal of members and education and training
requirements. If we were to provisionally propose that appointment should be
made by CHRE itself, then allowing CHRE to regulate its own constitution in this
way would be attractive, on the model we are proposing for the regulatory
councils. However, if the preferred option is for the Government to make
appointments, on the basis set out above, then it would be more appropriate for
the matters which would otherwise be in the constitution to continue to be set out
in statute. To give the Government the power to change the basic structure of the
CHRE at will, without Parliamentary oversight, would not be appropriate.
12 Budget Responsibility and National Audit Act 2011, sch 1.
195