My Lords, I will also address Amendment 10 in my name. Amendment 9 seeks to ask how a regulator can, through its fitness to practise panels, judge well-being. I can see how health and safety can be judged objectively but well-being is a subjective judgment and it is very difficult to dispute a person’s view of a professional’s action having adversely impacted on their well-being. I have a concern that, as a sole criterion, it could be used in a vexatious way where there are other issues that somebody wishes to address against a professional, perhaps at a personal level, rather than it being focused on their professional conduct.
Amendment 10 seeks clarification of the prioritisation of the issues to be considered by fitness to practise panels. Such panels should not assess public confidence on the basis of purely personal condemnation of a person or the media’s response to what has happened—the so-called trial by media.
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If progress towards remediation was discounted without the clarification that I seek, it would not appear just. There would be a danger that panels felt biased towards punishing a professional who did not pose a risk to the public on the basis of what might subsequently be said in the media and on what had already been said.
I am concerned that the new paragraph could inhibit valid, open criticism for fear on the part of a regulator of decreasing public confidence in the profession. That might be particularly so in today’s climate, where we are striving to be open, transparent and candid with disclosure of problems.
There is a tension here: to maintain the confidence of the public might mean not being as open and transparent about all the variables, all the unknowns and all the risks that exist in the provision of health and social care, particularly in the provision of complex healthcare. The Bill is trying to address those very issues and, I hope, to be realistic. I hope that the Minister will be able to give me some clarification on both these issues.