The chair of the Commons Public Accounts Committee has said that the body that regulates health and adult social care in England was set up with "an impossible task".

Margaret Hodge told the Today programme's Evan Davis that a report into the Care Quality Commission (CQC) found that the body had too much to do with too little money.

On the departure of its chief executive Cynthia Bower, Mrs Hodge said that a lack of "effective leadership" was also part of the problem.

She said that the CQC have to register over 10,000 GP services soon and insisted a "rigorous form of inspection is needed" for this.

Mrs Hodge also said that the CQC had only performed half of the inspections that said they had, so to give the body further duties like the regulation of IVF is "madness at this time". She also criticised the dropping of the star rating system for care homes.

"This is an organisation that is essentially about quality and they don't measure themselves on any quality indicators," she said.

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