By Oliver Hotham

The body set up to monitor heath and social care in Britain has failed in its primary responsibilities, an influential committee of MPs has found.

The public accounts committee found the Care Quality Commission's (CQC) reduced budget and meant it could not fulfil its responsibilities.

It had also failed to spend its budget because of delays in hiring staff, MPs said.

The committee was "far from convinced that the CQC is up to the major challenge of registering and assessing 10,000 GP practices this year," said chairman Margaret Hodge.

She continued: "The CQC plays an absolutely vital role in protecting people from poor quality or unsafe care, but it has failed to perform that role effectively.

"Registration will now be decided on the basis of information from GPs themselves and there is a risk that the CQC will simply become a postbox.

"Unless the assessment of GP practices is meaningful and robust the Commission cannot be sure that basic standards of quality and safety are being met."

The committee said the CQC also suffered from a lack of confidence by the public that it is an effective regulator.

The CQC acts as an independent body tasked with assessing the quality of the NHS, but it has suffered from inefficiency and budget problems.

Whistleblowers are key to the commission's work, and MPs criticised its closing of the dedicated whistle blowing line previous NHS regulators has used.

The CQC regulates 21,000 care providers against 16 standards of quality and safety.