Campaigners angry at call for scrapping of care standards

Campaigners are “outraged“ by a call from Conservative leader
Iain Duncan Smith for the scrapping of the new care standards,
writes Katie Leason.

Kina Avebury, chairperson of the Coalition for Quality and Care,
which represents around 60 organisations and individuals including
the Centre for Policy on Ageing, Age Concern England, and Action on
Elder Abuse, said that suggestion that the regulations be
‘annulled’ has enormous implications with the potential to “pull
down the whole edifice”.

Duncan Smith tabled four early day motions calling for the
annulment of the National Care Standards Commission’s registration
regulations, the fees and frequency of inspections regulations, the
care home regulations and the private and voluntary health care
regulations.

The tabling of such a motion is a device to draw attention to an
issue, and to elicit support by inviting other members to add their
signatures.

Avebury said that good providers had no problem in raising the
standards.

A spokesperson for Liam Fox, shadow secretary for health and one
of the signatories of the motion, said the move was to draw
attention to the way the government had “chronically mismanaged”
the care home sector. He added that the standards were “vague,
overbearing, and causing uncertainty in the care home sector”.