Regulation of Health and Social Care Professionals Consultation

to its functions that do not relate to health care regulation, such as its benevolent
functions. 15
10.26 The CHRE is required to provide advice and investigate and report on matters
relevant to its functions when requested to do so by the Secretary of State or
devolved administrations. The CHRE also has duties to provide information about
the exercise of its functions and to seek the views of members of the public and
patient interest groups. The CHRE must also prepare an annual report. 16
10.27 The general powers and duties of the CHRE have been exercised in practice
through the publication of documents which aim to share good practice as well as
conducting research into professional health care regulation. A focus of CHRE’s
output has been the production of annual performance reviews of the regulators.
These review the performance of the regulators against agreed standards, and
make recommendations on points where there could be improvements. CHRE
also audits the initial stages of regulators’ fitness to practise processes. These
audits consider a sample of the decisions made by each regulator to close a case
without referral to a formal hearing in front of a fitness to practise panel or
committee. The CHRE also reviews all final decisions made by the regulators’
fitness to practise panels and committees. In the last financial year it reviewed
over 2000 decisions. 17
10.28 The Health and Social Care Bill 2011 includes a requirement on the CHRE to
publish an annual strategic plan and clarifies that the duty to give advice will
extend to matters connected to social work. The CHRE will also be given powers
to provide advice and auditing services to bodies such as the regulators and
where advice is given to a body, that body will be required to pay a fee. There will
also be a power to accredit voluntary registers. 18
Provisional view
10.29 Statute law gives the CHRE several general functions. These are not subject to
further detail in rules or regulations. Instead, the functions, powers and duties of
the CHRE are stated broadly, which arguably gives the CHRE a good deal of
flexibility to perform its supervisory role.
10.30 In Part 3 we considered statements of general functions for the regulators and
concluded that the need for general functions disappears in our proposed
scheme. However, this analysis does not extend to the CHRE’s general
functions. Unlike the regulators, the powers and duties of the CHRE are not
detailed elsewhere in statute law but are contained entirely in this provision. In
other words, they are a self-contained description of the powers of the CHRE
which are not expanded elsewhere. Arguably, the use of general duties is more
appropriate when dealing with the broad public functions given to a metaregulator
like the CHRE, rather than for bodies tasked with dealing with the cases
of individual professionals. We therefore provisionally propose that CHRE’s
15 As above, s 26(6).
16 As above, ss 26A and 26B and sch 7, para 16.
17
Council for Healthcare Regulatory Excellence, Written Evidence to the Health Select
Committee (2011) para 1.2.
18 Health and Social Care Bill 2011, cls 223 to 226.
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