Nursing and Midwifery (Amendment) Order 2008

My Lords, I would like to be clear on one point. It is always very boring to throw Explanatory Memorandums at Ministers because they probably have not had a chance to open them, but I think the Minister said that the nurses and midwives would be given powers to prescribe in advance of an emergency. That is not what the Explanatory Memorandum says. Paragraph 7.2 refers to the need, "““to make temporary annotations to its register during the sort of civil emergency where other civil contingency arrangements will be in place””." It will be quite cumbersome, because it could not be done in advance. You would have to see a pandemic coming and then register nurses and midwives. What the Minister says makes sense. Such people would not be fully qualified because they are not registered. They are registrants—people coming on to the register. She might like to clarify that. It may not be possible to answer this now, but I would be interested to know how the Appointments Commissions will be advised about the professionals who are to be appointed. It will have to interview people because it will have to have a long list, a short list and other lists and it will have to interview people against criteria. Professionals will need to be involved and I wonder where they will come from.