Health Committee follow-up

The Health Committee is today announcing its follow-up to a recommendation in its report on Revalidation of Doctors, published in February, in which the Committee said that it intended to exercise on behalf of Parliament the power nominally held by the Privy Council to hold the General Medical Council to account. The Committee has subsequently agreed that this approach should be extended to include the Nursing and Midwifery Council, and so it will be taking evidence from both organisations in separate sessions on Tuesday 14 June.

Similarly, in its report on the appointment of the new Chair of the Care Quality Commission in September last year, the Committee said that it intended to hold regular annual review meetings with CQC. The Committee has decided that it should adopt a similar approach in relation to Monitor, and so both of these organisations will be giving evidence in separate sessions on Tuesday 28 June.

There are no formal calls for evidence for these meetings, but the Committee would be pleased to receive written submissions on the work of any of these four organisations in advance of the meetings.

The deadline for submitting written submissions is midday on Wednesday 8 June for sessions with the General Medical Council and the Nursing and Midwifery Council.

The deadline for submitting written submissions is midday on Wednesday 22 June for sessions with the Care Quality Commission and Monitor.

Guidance on submitting written evidence

It assists the Committee if those submitting written evidence adhere to the following guidelines:

Each submission should:

• state clearly who the submission is from, ie whether from yourself in a personal capacity (Submission from, eg, Miss Dee Dee Lee) or sent on behalf of an organisation (eg Submission from Insert Name Ltd);
• be no more than 3,000 words in length;
• as far as possible comprise a single document attachment to the email;
• begin with a short summary in bullet point form;
• have numbered paragraphs; and
• be in Word format with as little use of colour or logos as possible (Reports are published in black and white).

The submission should be sent by e-mail to healthcommem@parliament.uk and have the ‘Name of the inquiry’ in the Subject line.

It would be helpful, for Data Protection purposes, if individuals submitting written evidence would send their contact details separately in a covering email in a block of text laid out vertically (not horizontally). See example below:

eg: Miss Dee Dee Lee
London House
London Avenue
London SO00 0OO
Tel: 0000 000 0000 / Mob: 00000 000000
deedeelee1005 @ xxxxxxx.uk

You should also be aware that there may be circumstances in which the House of Commons will be required to communicate information to third parties on request, in order to comply with its obligations under the Freedom of Information Act 2000.

Though there is a strong preference for emailed submissions, those without access to a computer should send a hard copy to:

Committee Assistant
Health Committee
Committee Office
House of Commons
7 Millbank
London SW1P 3JA

Please also note that:

• Committees make public much of the evidence they receive during inquiries. If you do not wish your submission to be published, you must clearly say so. If you wish to include private or confidential information in your submission to the Committee, please contact the Clerk of the Committee to discuss this.

• Material already published elsewhere should not form the basis of a submission, but may be referred to within a proposed submission, in which case a hard copy of the published work should be included.

• Evidence submitted must be kept confidential until published by the Committee, unless publication by the person or organisation submitting it is specifically authorised.

• Once submitted, evidence is the property of the Committee. The Committee normally, though not always, chooses to make public the written evidence it receives, by publishing it on the internet (where it will be searchable), by printing it or by making it available through the Parliamentary Archives. If there is any information you believe to be sensitive you should highlight it and explain what harm you believe would result from its disclosure. The Committee will take this into account in deciding whether to publish or further disclose the evidence.

• Select Committees are unable to investigate individual cases.

For up-to-date information on progress of the inquiry visit: http://www.parliament.uk/healthcom