Health and Care Bill

Debate between Baroness Fraser of Craigmaddie and Lord Patel

Lords Hansard - Part 2 & Committee stage
Wednesday 26th January 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Fraser of Craigmaddie (Con)]

My Lords, in this rather large group of amendments, I shall take us from catering to my Amendment 242 on professional regulation. I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, for adding her name. I draw your Lordships’ attention to my registered interests, in particular as chief executive of Cerebral Palsy Scotland. I am involved with the employment of regulated allied health professionals.

Clause 142 gives the Secretary of State far-ranging powers to alter the professional regulatory landscape, with the potential to make significant changes to how certain health and care professions may be regulated, including the power to remove professions from, or bring professions into, statutory regulation.

The UK model of regulation for healthcare is rigid, complex and needs to change to better protect patients, to support our health services and to help the future workforce meet future challenges. The case for reform has been acknowledged.

Whether a health and care profession falls under regulation is a major decision affecting not only the professions themselves but employers, patients and service users who place their trust in those professionals. My Amendment 242 is a probing one. I want to explore some of the issues that will be particularly important for the Government to consider as and when they might seek to use these extended powers.

I want first to thank my noble friend the Minister and the Bill team for the time they have taken so far to discuss the issues around my amendment. We are all agreed on the importance of encouraging greater collaboration between regulators, with the ability to share data and intelligence, but I remain to be convinced that the legislation is being used to reduce regulatory silos, which is crucial to reducing regulatory failures in the future.

I want to be clear that I am not advocating for a single super regulator, which would be a step in the wrong direction, not to mention complicated, disruptive and expensive. I would rather harness the best elements of professional regulation and give the regulators the tools to work more closely together and share best practice more consistently.

I accept that work is being done in the department on various regulatory reform initiatives. These are all important, but it strikes me that they are all focused on individual regulators and amend specific operational issues, rather than looking at the landscape as a whole and what could be achieved.

We have sadly seen all too many reviews and inquiries which have identified regulatory silos as a key factor in why something went terribly wrong. My noble friend Lady Cumberlege’s First Do No Harm report highlights the issue starkly, but the Paterson inquiry, the Sir Robert Francis report on Mid Staffs, the Shipman inquiry and others have all underscored the value of greater collaboration between regulatory bodies, sharing data and intelligence as well as adopting shared professional standards. Reducing and removing silos is also good for professionals and employers, with benefits in terms of intra-professional learning and for professional and patient safety.

I am grateful to the Health and Care Professions Council for its briefing, but I was concerned to note something which regulators have stressed to me: that due to their tightly defined duties, they have often been forced to resort to informal memorandums of understanding to try to make the system work better. That is piecemeal and inefficient— frankly, I would be extremely disappointed if the Minister in his response was to rely on such MoUs to fix the issue.

Do not the powers in this Bill offer a chance to look at things differently: a whole system regulatory approach rather than a set of silos? Amendment 242 identifies some principles and considerations that I believe the Government would find beneficial in developing this more collaborative landscape.

Maintaining regulatory independence is crucial. The Government have rightly recognised this in other legislation recently, but I would welcome confirmation from the Minister that this remains a cornerstone of any future regulatory reform proposals. I would be grateful for reassurance that no regulatory reform would be undertaken by the UK Government without working with the devolved Administrations to ensure that it worked for all parts of the UK.

I particularly want to highlight the benefits of multi-profession regulation, which, as the CEO of an organisation that relies on a range of expert allied health and care professionals registered with the HCPC, I see at first hand, supporting improvements across professions that are increasingly interconnected. As the Minister is aware, the HCPC regulates 15 professions, so is able to utilise common frameworks and outcome-based standards. This approach could, and should, be spread among all the professional regulators.

This is particularly important as the Government, NHS England and NHS Improvement seek to create a more flexible workforce with an ability to move between professions, work as multidisciplinary teams and support career progression. From my own experience, I know that this is positive, but we need our regulatory system to keep up with innovations in delivery. Can my noble friend the Minister therefore tell us about how we can harness the benefits of multi-profession regulation and how he anticipates this will influence the Government’s thinking in terms of reform? Collaboration and the development of a system-wide approach to overcome fragmentation and silos is critical to the future success of regulation. It is an enabler of better care, and a collaborative structure would generate considerably higher and richer levels of data.

Finally, this holistic approach would offer an opportunity to create consistent criteria for making decisions about which professions may be brought into or taken out of regulation. Could the Minister put it on record today that the issues in the amendment are principles that would govern the future use of the powers within Clause 142, that they are all principles that the Government are actively considering and that no decisions on regulatory change would be taken if the criteria set out in this amendment were not met? Once again, I thank him and his team for his engagement so far, and I look forward to his response today. I hope we can continue discussions between now and Report.

[Lord Patel (CB)]

My Lords, I rise to speak to Amendment 243 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Merron, and Amendment 264 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath.

Yesterday I was chastised—wrongly, in my view—for speaking at length. Such boldness requires training in speaking up, confidence in being right and using authority. The comments came from a government Whip, who happens to be a registered nurse. As a doctor, I am used to that. When a nurse speaks up, patient safety improves, health equity improves, collegial relationships are stronger—again, as a doctor I can vouch for that—and healthcare systems improve. This is because of their training. Not recognising legally the status that the title of “nurse” brings to those that are highly trained and qualified and on a nursing council register is wrong.

We all know what a nurse is; a nurse is highly trained, highly competent, can do the job well and is on a nursing register. Anybody else is not a nurse. It is right, therefore, that we recognise this and give it a legal status. Furthermore, the NHS and health providers should not employ anyone as a nurse who does not meet the above criteria. I understand that last year there were 195 advertisements for nurses in the NHS which did not say that the qualification of being registered was necessary. In my view, that is wrong. I strongly back this amendment, and I look forward to the contribution of my noble friend Lady Watkins.

Turning to Amendment 264 on the appointment of consultants in surgery, I am a fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons of England, the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh and the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow, so I speak on behalf of all surgical colleges. Let me give your Lordships an example: there is a surgical post empty in Birmingham. A highly qualified person, who was well-trained in Scotland and holds a fellowship of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh, is a key candidate for application but cannot be appointed because the Royal College of Surgeons of England cannot provide an assessor. On the other hand, there is a surgical vacancy in Glasgow, and the top candidate is a fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons of England but can be appointed without a Royal College of Surgeons of England assessor being there. That is a total anomaly.

A person can be appointed who is fully trained in Scotland, is a fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh, works in Cambridge, applies in Cambridge, but you cannot have an assessor from the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh. In all other specialties—the Royal Colleges of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, of Ophthalmologists, of Radiologists, of Psychiatrists, of Anaesthetists, and in public health—the assessor can come from any part of the United Kingdom. This anomaly can be stopped very easily. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, that it is not a big deal; just change it in legislation. I do not know who opposes it.