Commission's response to CQC consultation

The Equality and Human Rights Commission welcomes the Care Quality Commission’s commitment to incorporating human rights into its new regulatory framework.

The Commission’s analysis is that the CQC’s strategy for integrating human rights into regulation of health and social care services would be more effective in protecting and promoting human rights if it explicitly connected the Fundamental Standards regulations, associated guidance and five key questions to relevant articles of the European Convention on Human Rights (Convention articles).

We recommend that the ‘human rights principles’ (‘fairness; respect; equality; dignity; autonomy: right to life and staff rights/empowerment) used by the CQC throughout the assessment framework and provider handbooks are replaced with, or specifically reference, relevant Convention articles. This would ensure that CQC inspectors, Experts by Experience, providers, service users and the general public are aware of potential Human Rights Act contraventions in health and social care provision. This approach, which explicitly highlights the human rights of service users and staff, is also likely to have an empowering effect.

Read the Commission's submission to the CQC.

Last Updated: 05 Jun 2014