Health Care and Associated Professions (Miscellaneous Amendments) Order 2008

rose to move, That the draft order laid before the House on 4 June be approved. The noble Baroness said: My Lords, this draft order is the second in a series of affirmative resolution orders. These form part of the Government’s reform and modernisation of the regulation of the healthcare professions. Noble Lords will be familiar with this and may recall that we debated similar reforms in respect of the Nursing and Midwifery Council early last month. The aim of the reforms is to enhance public confidence in the ability of the healthcare regulatory bodies to protect the public interest and to deal with poor performance and professional standards. Public concerns and doubts based on perceived partiality of the regulators have threatened to undermine patient, public and professional trust in the system of professional regulation. These concerns have been highlighted by a number of high-profile inquiries, with which, by now, the House will be familiar. The order is part of the process of implementing the recommendations of those inquiries. It makes various amendments to the framework legislation for the regulation of doctors, opticians, osteopaths and chiropractors. The main changes relate to the governance arrangements of the General Medical Council, the General Optical Council, the General Osteopathic Council and the General Chiropractic Council. Those changes include: moving each of those bodies from a partially elected to a fully appointed council, in response to the recommendation from Dame Janet Smith that professional interests should not unduly influence council members; members to be appointed by the independent Appointments Commission against specified skills and competences; provision for a separate constitution order to specify the numbers of lay and professional members and their terms of office; and provisions with respect to the suspension and removal of members, which will make it easier to remove council members who do not come up to the standards that we would expect of professional regulators. Each council has put forward proposals that will ensure parity between lay and professional members. The councils will all be smaller than at present, making them more board-like and strategic. There will also be changes to the provisions relating to the regulators’ committee structures to make them less prescriptive. The order makes a number of other miscellaneous amendments. I will outline those most worth noting. For the first time, each council’s annual report will have to include a description of the arrangements that the council has put in place to ensure that it adheres to good practice in relation to equality and diversity. Each regulatory body will be able to strike off registrants who are barred from working with children or vulnerable adults when the new independent barring board is established. Finally, the GMC will be able to register anyone whom it considers suitably experienced as a doctor—such as recently retired doctors—in an emergency such as pandemic flu. There are special arrangements for the registration of osteopaths and chiropractors with older UK qualifications that are not recognised under current legislation. This change is made at the request of the two regulators concerned and will enable them to make rules to deal with some practitioners who did not benefit from the original transitional provisions that enabled such people to register at the time their registers were first opened. All these measures are supported by each of the regulatory bodies covered by the order and I commend them to the House. I beg to move. Moved, That the draft order laid before the House on 4 June be approved. 21st Report from the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments.—(Baroness Thornton.)