EUC Report: Healthcare Professionals

Lord Dykes Excerpts

Thursday 22nd March 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Dykes]

My Lords, from these Benches, I thank most warmly the noble Baroness, Lady Young of Hornsey, and her sub-committee’s members for this excellent report in what is an incredibly complicated area. A good deal of thought has gone into its construction. I think that the evidence taken from a large number of very impressive people helped the sub-committee’s deliberations. It is good also to see, as usual, the chairman of the European Union Select Committee in his place listening to this debate.

As noble Lords have said, what is striking about the report is that it is not just to be put on a shelf and then forgotten; this is a matter of crucial importance where the report has breathed life into the Government’s own deliberations and conclusions, some of which I am sure we will hear from the Minister today. We will then await the European directive.

I also thank from these Benches the noble Viscount, Lord Bridgeman, for his comments, partly because of his very close connections with and experience of the medical profession and well known hospitals. He has acquired great knowledge over many years. I hope that we can perhaps use instead of “single market dogma” the more congenial “single market objective”, because that is a legitimate objective of the European Union—indeed, it is set down in European Union law and applies to us as well because we obey European Union law, I hope, in all respects. When all the complexities have been ironed out, the mobility of healthcare professionals will be an important part of the growing single market not only in the European Union but in the EEA as well. Therefore, we await the terms and contents of the directive.

I commend the way in which the Commission has very patiently and carefully conducted its hearings and produced its Green Paper. It has consulted and listened to all sorts of advice in a way that happens more often in Brussels than in member states, where Governments sometimes legislate too quickly depending on the individual characteristics of the parliamentary system that they enjoy or suffer from, as the case may be.

This process will lead to a directive and member states will then bring in their own national legislation. That will be the crucial moment for HMG to implant into it those important requirements that we have heard about at the beginning of this debate and the primary considerations of the committee as described by the noble Baroness, Lady Young of Hornsey.

I again thank the chairman of the European Union Select Committee. I think that it is now in order to quote a letter from him to the members of the committee because it is in the public and parliamentary domain. The last but one paragraph of his letter of 16 March, referring to the report from the committee of the noble Baroness, Lady Young, states:

“The Committee considered that to ensure that professionals’ qualifications and skills were adequate and reflected modern practice, the training requirements of the Directive needed updating”.

That will surely be one of the most important components of the directive that we await. The letter continues:

“The Committee proposed that mandatory use of the Internal Market Information System by competent authorities in Member States to exchange information about healthcare professionals would be simpler and more cost-effective than the European professional card”.

From these Benches, I agree with that very much indeed. In the longer-term future there may be a European-wide single market healthcare professional electronic identity card that can be used, but that is further down the track.

Public confidence is important, not only in this country. There are individual medical stories in the dramatic press in other member states too about things that go wrong with a doctor, healthcare professional or nurse practitioner where something tragic happens—or if someone suffers prolonged illness rather than the tragedy of death. Those people have come with inadequate language qualifications, or other details of their training were substandard, and therefore they were not able to perform as the public would want.

But there are very small numbers of those cases. The press with its lurid headlines is bound to highlight them. In this case it does a good service. We often grumble about the press and its dramatic headlines, but in this case it is good to make sure that patients’ safety is the real priority. But it is a small number, so we should not go too far down the other path. That is something to which we are prone in this country, with our excessively nationalistic press: saying that in all respects British standards are higher and better than in other member states, including large member states in the European Union where more and more now the standards are getting very similar. There is a high level of quality and of protection. It is easy and tempting to go down that path, but it is a flawed path and misleading and one that I think the Government would be wise to discourage as much as possible and explain the realities behind these matters.

We wish the report well. We look forward to the final judgment of the Commission, the publication of the proposed new European directive and the Government's conclusions pro tem today. I also thank the noble Earl, Lord Howe, for coming here only three days after the end of his herculean efforts on the Health and Social Care Bill to deal with this important matter. We thank him for that and support the conclusions that he may lead us to this afternoon.