Tory Ministers are looking for ways to slash health regulators even as the Covid-19 pandemic continues to surge, the Mirror can reveal.
In a move branded “absolute madness” by Labour, the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) paid private consultants to “provide options” for reducing the number of healthcare regulators.
The six-month contract with KPMG, worth up to £120,000, is set to report back in December - but crucial details of their instructions by ministers have been withheld from the public.
There are 18 official bodies regulating health care in the UK. They include bodies which ensure the quality of medical, dental and chiropractic services and care homes.
They also regulate doctors, nurses and midwives, and ensure pharmaceuticals are safe for public use.
But key details of the contract have been redacted, and the Department has not revealed which regulators it would like to see scrapped.
“One of the biggest lessons we have learnt from the pandemic is that you cannot do public health on the cheap,” Shadow Health Minister Justin Madders said.
“It is absolute madness in the middle of a pandemic to be looking to water down health regulators. What on earth are they thinking of?”
And Jo Maugham, Director of the Good Law Project, who unearthed the contract, said: "If our focus in the middle of a pandemic is - rather bizarrely - to cut health regulators shouldn't we be told why?
“And the work be done by public servants - rather than for money?"
The redacted contract, seen by the Mirror instructs KPMG to provide “an independent review to provide options for how the number of healthcare regulators should be reduced and how this might be achieved.”
The Government’s Health and Care Bill, currently being debated in Parliament, would hand the Health Secretary the power to scrap regulatory bodies entirely, or merge them with other bodies if ministers believe they cover the same ground.
And it would mean Ministers could deregulate healthcare professions entirely.
Furthermore, his could be done with ‘secondary legislation’ - meaning it would face minimal scrutiny from MPs.
Former Health Secretary Matt Hancock’s Health White Paper, published in February, said the government expected “the vast majority of professionals such as doctors, nurses, dentists and paramedics will always be subject to statutory regulation.”
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But it went on to suggest some professions could be removed from regulation as “technology” made them less risky.
Dr Claudia Paoloni, President of the Hospital Consultants and Specialists Association, said: “Overhauling professional regulation would require mammoth costs and resources, at a time when the NHS is grappling with a fresh wave of Covid.
“Meanwhile, staff are up against a mountain of elective care work.
“It begs the question of whether the costs involved would be better used elsewhere.
“There is scant detail on what is intended with this investigation, however HCSA would seek assurances that patient safety is paramount.”
The Department of Health and Social Care has been approached for comment.
