Draft European Qualifications (Health and Social Care Professions) (Amendment etc.) (EU Exit) Regulations 2018 Draft European Qualifications (Pharmacists) (Amendment etc.) (EU Exit) Regulations (Northern Ireland) 2018

Martyn Day Excerpts

Tuesday 29th January 2019 General Committees

[Martyn Day (Linlithgow and East Falkirk) (SNP)]

I am grateful to the Minister and the shadow spokesperson for their comments today. I will confine my comments to the lead statutory instrument and will not discuss the Northern Ireland instrument.

This SI is about repealing the EU system of qualification assessments and replacing it with something that in my opinion is nowhere near as robust, but instead worryingly ad hoc. Having read the legislation, I believe the new automatic system sounds like anything but automatic. A lot of this seems to be about offloading the risk of assessing the ongoing relevance of applicants’ qualifications for healthcare positions in the UK away from Government. The regulations put enormous amounts of responsibility on the designated UK health regulators to decide which EEA and Swiss qualifications are no longer comparable, with no apparent framework other than that they are allowed to designate non-comparability based on the course, the institution or even just the country itself.

Those regulators have also been given the discretion to decide how to treat the EEA and Swiss qualifications that they assess to be non-comparable. I therefore have some questions. Are the regulators happy with that? Have the Government checked that the regulators are happy to take on that burden of responsibility, and what preparations are taking place? Will new guidance need to be put into place to support that? As this will amount to regulators taking on the burden of making decisions that they have never had to make before, will there be a detrimental impact on the UK health and social care services workforce?

The explanatory memorandum states:

“The amended legislation will no longer include obligations on regulators to abide by the Directive training standards when setting standards for UK qualifications, although regulators may use the Directive as a guide when setting standards in the UK.”

That sounds like the UK could be put at a competitive disadvantage to the EU, through the creation of different standards between the two, again potentially wreaking havoc with our workforce. The transition provision goes nowhere near far enough to protect those currently going through the process. Saying that the UK will

“allow applications which have been made before exit day to be concluded under current arrangements as far as possible”

is no comfort whatsoever.

The Scottish health sector relies heavily on the EU workforce. This legislation could have a disproportionate and potentially devastating impact on our health sector. I believe it is a terrible piece of legislation that fails to provide a robust framework for transition, any protection for those making applications to our health sector or any assurances that our workforce will not suffer considerably as a result. The fact that the explanatory memorandum says that there is

“no, or no significant, impact on the public sector”

is laughable, and also puzzling, considering that that is directly contradicted on the very next page, in paragraph 12.5, which states that there could be an

“impact on the availability of health and care professionals”.

I have normally taken a pragmatic approach to these Delegation Legislation Committees on emergency exit regulations, saying that we need regulations in place and that I am not opposed, but I find it hard to do that today. Unless I hear suitable reassurances from the Minister, I am minded to try to force a Division on this matter.