Health Professionals: EEA and Non-EEA Citizens

Baroness Thornton Excerpts

Thursday 8th September 2011 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Thornton]

My Lords, I thank the noble Viscount, Lord Bridgeman, for bringing this important matter to your Lordships' House. Although this is a short debate, it is none the less of huge importance. I am very keen to identify these Benches with the need to resolve this matter. A Health Select Committee report last year looked at the death of David Gray as a result of Dr Daniel Ubani and said then that this is a matter of great importance and urgency. How much more so now? That report stated that if the GMC had been able to carry out language and competence tests on EEA doctors wishing to practise as GPs then that life and perhaps other lives would have been saved. The Select Committee was keen to see the issue resolved then.

We know that the Government need to press for change to the relevant EU directive to enable the GMC to test the clinical competence of doctors and to undertake systematic testing of languages. I was very pleased to see that Sub-Committee G of our European Union Committee has taken evidence on this matter and will be reporting. That helps to strengthen the case. It would possibly have been helpful if it had reported before the deadline for the Green Paper, which is 21 September, but the fact that the evidence that has been given to it has been made public is very important. I knew that it was considering these matters, but I read with alarm some of the reports about the evidence that it had received. Dickon Weir-Hughes said to our Select Committee that the Nursing and Midwifery Council had to operate a two-tier system because of EU rules on the free movement of workers. In evidence to the same inquiry, the GMC revealed that a foreign doctor’s husband had contacted it on her behalf to register her for work because she could not speak English. It went on to report that the Nursing and Midwifery Council is now admitting people who have not been near a patient for 20 years, as the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, said in his speech.

We know that the GMC and the NMC have huge responsibilities for patient safety and we know that we must listen to them about this problem because this is about risk to patients. The problem we face is that this directive is an overarching document based on the principle of freedom of movement in the internal market and applies to several hundred professions, not just to those in the healthcare sector. While we on these Benches of course support the principle of freedom of movement and recognise the positive contribution of European Union nurses, midwives and doctors in the provision of healthcare in the UK, as the noble Viscount said, freedom of movement should not take precedence over patient safety. That is the challenge facing the UK Government in these negotiations.

I hope that this debate will help the Minister in his representations to BIS on behalf of the Department of Health about why this review is so important and why we have to stand firm on it. I join other noble Lords in urging BIS to continue to reflect our concerns in its submission to the Green Paper consultations and I urge the Government to continue their support when the draft legislation changes are made later this year for the consideration of the European Parliament and Council of Ministers.

We also know that the wheels of European directives move exceedingly slowly, which is why the points made by the noble Lord, Lord Kakkar, and others about addressing this issue in the mean time, if we possibly can, are also important. I would also like to identify these Benches with the call to do that.