Commenting on the publication of the Plan, CQC's Chief Executive Sir Julian Hartley said:

 "We welcome this ambitious, future-focused plan for a world-class NHS that truly delivers for patients and the public. And we stand ready to play a central role in its delivery – the Plan sets out how our role will be further strengthened to make us "the most effective, modern and patient oriented healthcare regulator in the world".

"We will develop a stronger focus on all dimensions of quality and on tackling inequalities in access, experience, and outcomes. Our ambition to become intelligence-led will be further boosted by the development of tools that help us capture the voice and experiences of people using health and social care, which we will use alongside our own data and that held by partners to spot and act on risk earlier.

"We are already developing our new clearer, simpler, assessment approach, and making sure our experienced teams of inspectors, led by our newly appointed Chief Inspectors, will be able to conduct more inspections and share feedback on the findings more quickly – so that we can support providers to make faster improvements and the public have timely information about care.

"We will also continue to build on our work looking across local systems, using our unique perspective across both health and social care to understand where gaps between services impact people – and how to close those gaps.

"We look forward to our already close working relationship with HSSIB being put on a statutory footing, and to working together to drive up safety. We will also work closely with the new National Director of Patient Experience – sharing, learning from and acting on patient insight, and ensuring providers have robust arrangements in place to support people to speak up about concerns.

"Finally, we are pleased that Government has listened to the call – from us but more importantly, from families seeking learning and justice – to review the statutory time limit within which we can explore bringing criminal enforcement action. We look forward to working with the Government to support this review.

"This is a plan to harness technology and innovation not only to deliver care but to act on longstanding inequalities – a blueprint for a health service we can all be proud of and that people can rely on. We are absolutely committed to our role in delivering on it."