Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether his Department has plans to (a) undertake a review the decision by the Health and Care Professions Council on 14 February 2019 to increase subscription fees for allied health professionals and (b) make an assessment of the effect of that decision on trends in the level of employees in that sector.

The Health and Care Professions Council (HCPC) is independent of Government, funded by registrants’ fees on a costs recovery basis. It is the responsibility of the HCPC to set its registration fees at an appropriate level.

Following a public consultation, the HCPC is planning to raise its annual fees by £16. If adopted, the HCPC’s annual registration fee will rise from £90 to £106 a year from October 2019. The HCPC’s registration fees will remain the lowest of any of the United Kingdom-wide health and care regulators. Registration fees are tax-deductible and this fee rise will amount to just over £1 a month extra for most of the HCPC’s registrants.

The Government has made no assessment of the potential effects of the changes to the HCPC’s registration fees from October 2019.