My Lords, it is always a challenge to follow the erudition of my noble friend Lord Walton, who certainly has no difficulty with the English language. I am sorry to add to the noble Earl’s load of potential medical speakers this afternoon but it is a pleasure to welcome this initiative which at long last gives the GMC the powers to ensure that doctors coming to work in the UK can speak and understand English. It has been long awaited and although it has always been part of the assessment of non-EU doctors it will now be a requirement for EU doctors too. After all that, it might sound a little churlish to say that there remain some things to be done about long-running issues that are not addressed in this statutory instrument. I hope the noble Earl will forgive me for mentioning them here.
I go back a little while, not quite as long as my noble friend Lord Walton, to when I was chairman of the Specialist Training Authority and the EU directives were being produced in the 1990s. Since those directives governing the free flow of workers across the EU came in, doctors trained in other member states can come to practise in the UK quite freely. However, we recognised from the very beginning that we know relatively little about the training of specialists in other EU countries. We have no knowledge of the curriculum they go through or the skills and knowledge of, for example, cardiologists, neurosurgeons and paediatricians from a selection of EU counties such as France, Italy, Spain and Germany. They may be perfectly fine, of course, and they probably are, but apart from knowing that they have spent a certain minimum number of years in training, we are not allowed in the UK to assess any of their knowledge or skills before they are put on the register of specialists. That is not the case for specialists coming from, say, America, Australia, New Zealand or any other non-EU country; they have to have their training and skills properly assessed and they may be required to take more.
Questions about the safety of our patients as far as EU doctors are concerned have been raised in this House in the past, but I have little confidence that we will be able to change the arrangements now when we
would, it seems, have to convince the other EU member countries of this problem. Will the noble Earl seek advice from the GMC on how it intends to check on the safe practice of specialists from other EU countries? It is possible that its system of responsible officers may help. However, the GMC can act only after a doctor is already on the specialist register. There is a question of whether there is sufficient capacity in the responsible officer network. It would helpful if this issue could be aired a little further. I hope that the noble Earl will be able to find out from the GMC how far it can go on this.
3.45 pm