Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what funding his Department plans to provide to the General Medical Council to conduct the preparatory work for bringing forward the statutory regulation of physician associates and anaesthesia associates.

On 18 July 2019 the Department announced that it would be asking the General Medical Council (GMC) to take forward the regulation of physician associates (PAs) and anaesthesia associates (AAs).

Funding has been agreed with the GMC to carry out development work and we are working with the GMC and stakeholders to develop legislation to bring PAs and AAs into regulation.

We intend to consult on draft legislation later this year.

Extending prescribing responsibilities to a profession involves a separate legislative process to the introduction of statutory regulation and requires amendments to the Human Medicines Regulations. The process is jointly led by NHS England and the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency. Once PAs and AAs have been brought into regulation, we will work with NHS England to consider allowing PAs and AAs to prescribe medicines where appropriate.