Professional Qualifications Bill [HL]

Lord Patel Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 25th May 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Patel (CB) [V]]

My Lords, I wish to speak mainly about how the Bill will affect recognition of qualifications of healthcare professionals and in particular medical doctors from overseas. I am a medical professional. Previously I have been involved with assessment of overseas qualified doctors and been a member of the General Medical Council, and I was chair of a regulator responsible for assessing the qualifications and experience of specialist doctors, a role now in the remit of the General Medical Council. However, I am currently not involved in the work of any healthcare regulator.

The Bill places obligations on regulators to establish a framework for recognition of professional qualifications from around the world and to share this information with similar bodies overseas, being transparent about entry and practice of regulated professions. The General Medical Council, the regulator of doctors in the United Kingdom, already has the powers, as the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, said, to do the majority of things that the Bill describes. It also has a long history of a well-established system of recognition of medical professionals’ qualifications and experience prior to granting entry to the register. In this context, this Bill is not only unnecessary but will lead to more confusion and unintended consequences unless amended.

Clause 1(1), granting international professions entitlement to practise based on either qualifications or experience, will undermine patient safety. Clause 1(2) runs the risk of replicating the EU directive on mutual recognition of professional qualification—the so-called MRPQ directive—the shortcomings of which were highlighted in the past as the directive related more to recognition of medical qualifications and less to competences, including language skills, a skill not applicable to some professions. I hope that the Minister can clarify, particularly in relation to medical professionals, the policy intent behind the proposals in the Bill, and give an assurance that he understands the potential issues that could affect the current and future registration process of healthcare regulators.

I acknowledge that this is framework legislation covering more than 160 professions, but, as drafted, it runs the risk of unintended consequences that would impact negatively on patient safety and on workforce shortages in medicine. The current well-established processes of recognition of qualifications are on demonstration of knowledge, skills and experience in a variety of well-tested processes, as mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Ribeiro. They go a long way to making sure that doctors from overseas have the necessary qualifications and experience, as well as language competences, before gaining entry to the medical register. The wording referring to “overseas qualifications” and “overseas experience” in Clause 1(2) would prevent regulators using their current system of assessment, and that cannot be right. I understand that that might not be the policy intent—the Explanatory Notes imply that—but in this area the Bill needs amending.

Unusually—in fact, uniquely—in his opening remarks the Minister indicated that he recognised the unique and well-developed processes of the General Medical Council for recognising qualifications of overseas doctors and intended to amend the Bill. I welcome those remarks. I would like to think that his change of mind was because he had sight of my speech, but I doubt that; it was probably more to do with briefing to his department from the General Medical Council. I am grateful to him for indicating that the Government will amend Clause 1(2), and I look forward to that—but I am sure that if the Government do not, I and others will be keen to do so in the spirit of improving the Bill. I look forward to the Minister’s reply.