Anaesthesia Associates and Physician Associates Order 2024

Debate between Lord Harris of Haringey and Lord Lansley

Monday 26th February 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

I am very glad to follow the noble Lord, Lord Winston, because he directs us to the central issue, of how we seek to ensure the safety of patients in all circumstances. What he was describing illustrates the essence of the relationship of a physician associate—or, for that matter, an anaesthesia associate—to the supervising doctor. That is a central issue as well. In the circumstances that we were just hearing about, the responsibility of the doctor or the consultant in charge of the patient is the central responsibility. It would be wrong to think that the devolution of tasks to an associate removes the responsibility of the doctor in charge of that patient.

I hope we agree that proceeding with the order is necessary because we want to bring physician associates and anaesthesia associates within the scope of regulation. This process has been very useful, not least because my noble friend and his colleagues have given us considerable time and energy in discussing the order and how it is to be implemented.

I confess to the House that when I was Secretary of State back in 2010 to 2012, and as the noble Lord, Lord Markham, made clear, there were relatively few physician associates. I remember them as physician assistants. I remember the desire on the part of physicians to have additional resources available to support them in that role. It was never to replace doctors; it was always to enable physicians to focus on where their responsibilities lie. That is still the purpose and the point of physician associates. I am less familiar with anaesthesia associates, and in those days, I do not remember understanding that they were there in the form in which we now have a number.

None of this debate is about trying to criticise physician associates, anaesthesia associates or the profession as a whole. We are setting out to make sure that as they are brought into regulation, that regulation works most effectively. From my point of view, the simple fact of being brought under the regulation of the General Medical Council was not a problem, because the General Medical Council was clearly addressing all the issues very efficiently and professionally. However, because the GMC regulates doctors, I confess that there is a worry about the idea of another profession being regulated by it. If one says, “I am GMC registered”, what do people assume by that phrase? They assume that one is a doctor. The distinction that needs to be made between the medical register, the specialist registers and the register that is to be established for physician associates and anaesthesia associates is critical.

As for myself, I am perfectly clear in my mind and would have started out by assuming that PAs and AAs would be regulated by the Health and Care Professions Council. That clearly was not the route that was chosen. In my view, it is too late to revisit that. However, the distinction in the registers under the GMC must be very clear.

Equally, the scope of practice and what the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, said about the governance of the trusts and the bodies responsible needs to be absolutely clear. In particular, the scope of practice is the essence of how we can ensure the safety of patients, so that the whole multidisciplinary team understands what their respective roles are. I am not sure that there is any merit in trying to understand which professions are responsible for which mistakes. Let us look at outcomes. The outcomes are the product of the multidisciplinary team and a group of professionals working together—they are not the results of individual professionals. Let us put that slightly to one side.

The only other thing that I feel very strongly about—which has been referred to in a number of respects—is that patients and the public need to understand who the professionals responsible for them or providing the service to them are. Let us be clear: we start from a point where I suspect that most patients in most circumstances where they are looked after by PAs or AAs do not know who they are and how they fit into the professional scene. It is not that we are looking to ensure that everybody needs to be educated about that—that is probably too hard a task—but I urge my noble friend the Minister, the regulators and the professionals involved to recognise that PAs or AAs do themselves and patients the greatest service by being absolutely clear at any moment—including proactively—that they are not the doctor in charge of that patient but that they are providing care under the supervision of the doctor for the given purpose. If anybody appears to be in any confusion whatever, it is important that that confusion is remedied. For patients, understanding who is doing what to them and why is an essential part of “no decision about me without me”.

While the order enables the regulation to proceed, I hope that our debates on it are not “fire and forget”. This is about a process that we should be looking at very carefully to understand whether the problems that we have referred to, and the difficulties and worries that we entertain while the order goes through, are dealt with in the subsequent regulation.

[Lord Harris of Haringey (Lab)]

My Lords, I declare my interest as the chair of the General Dental Council. It is not for me to comment extensively on matters affecting a fellow healthcare professional regulator, but I will say one thing directly in response to what the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, said about the substance of the order. Unlike the GMC, the GDC is responsible for all dental professionals, including dentists, dental nurses, dental technicians and so on in the four nations of the UK. I believe that it is helpful to the public to be assured that all the professionals they encounter when they enter a dental surgery will be registered as professionals by the same regulator and that they will have equal levels of assurance about the training and standards they can expect—and within a framework that indicates what the limits are of each of their professional responsibilities, what can and cannot be done, and how they are appropriately supervised.

My reason for intervening, however, is separate. The DHSC has made it clear that this order is the first step in the reform of the way that all the healthcare professionals are to be regulated. Indeed, it told the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee that the intent is to provide all regulators with “broadly equivalent powers”. While the GDC is some way down the queue—it is after the NMC, the Health and Care Professions Council and so on; although it is still helpful to get in early—this is potentially a template that will apply to all the regulated professions.

I make it clear that regulatory reform is welcome and long overdue. The GDC’s framework was set out in the Dentists Act 1984—that legislation is 40 years old, with only limited updating since then; somehow, the GMC is slightly more prominent and gets more updating than some of the other professions. The Government first consulted about the scope of reform in 2017, following Law Commission recommendations three years earlier. It has taken a decade to get even to this stage, and we are still a very long way off from orders being prepared to cover the dental professions. By the time the orders for all the other professionals are agreed, the model in today’s order may be outdated.

The GDC welcomes the intention to give the regulatory bodies more authority to update their procedures and processes without recourse to Privy Council approval and the delays inherent in waiting for the DHSC to draft regulations and lay them before Parliament. Such updating would of course be subject to full consultation in each case by the regulators concerned and would be only in the framework laid out in orders such as the one we are debating. We need such reforms to enable regulators to operate as effectively as possible to protect the public better in the light of changes in the way the professions deliver their services.