Regulators have issued a grave warning to the government that proposed reforms will 'fatally weaken' their independence and pose a significant risk to patient safety.

The Health and Social Care Bill will allow the government to influence doctors' malpractice hearings and potentially veto investigations the new regulator wishes to carry out, they claim.

Speaking at the Commons public bill committee on Tuesday, Healthcare Commission chair Sir Ian Kennedy was due to say: "The risk of harm to patients is significant."

He was expected to say the planned merger of the Healthcare Commission, Commission for Social Care Inspection and Mental Health Act Commission would "at a critical moment set back the development of the culture of safety".

He claimed the new body, called the Care Quality Commission, would see a new managerial team "organising away-days and locked in meetings instead of meeting the accelerating demands and expectations of patients".

Sir Ian predicted it would take at least two years for the body, due to take over next April, to become fully operational.

CSCI also has serious misgivings about the bill, which states that investigations carried out by the Care Quality Commission would have to be authorised by the health secretary. It would not be allowed to carry out investigative work for its first year.

CSCI strategy director David Walden told HSJ: "We can carry out studies and publish reports that we think are very important, but a lot of the new regulator's work will need approval by the secretary of state. It seems the Department of Health will impose things on us."

Mr Walden was also concerned that social care would get sidelined, and questioned the DH's claim that the merger will save£60m a year.

"We've been making major savings over the past three years so a merger is unlikely to create anything at all in terms of further savings."

CSCI cut its 2006-07 budget by more than£7m and has cut 159 full-time posts since 2005.

  • Another new body being established under the bill has also sparked concern. The Office of the Health Professions Adjudicator, being set up to adjudicate in fitness to practise hearings, would have to report directly to the secretary of state and keep its annual accounts in a form determined by him or her. Written evidence submitted to the committee by the General Medical Council says: "The provisions as they stand will weaken, probably fatally, [the adjudicator's] independence."

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