19 January 2022

The Professional Standards Authority has welcomed the recently published government consultation Healthcare regulation: deciding when statutory regulation is appropriate.

The Department of Health and Social Care is consulting on the future of statutory regulation of health and social care professionals. This forms part of a wider aim to reform and modernise professional regulation. The consultation seeks to establish criteria to be used in assessing whether a profession should be regulated by statute.  

The Chief Executive of the Professional Standards Authority made the following remarks:

“Statutory regulation can be burdensome and often lacks flexibility. It should only be used where it is needed to protect the public. While there appear to be no plans to change who is and isn’t regulated at the moment, it is important for the Government to be transparent about how these decisions will be made, given that Parliamentary scrutiny of this sort of legislation may be limited. The plans in this consultation are a welcome step towards a more risk-based approach to deciding who should be regulated.”

Independent professional regulation exists to protect the public.  It is proposed in the consultation that the key question is whether the risk of harm posed by a health or social care profession warrants the oversight of a regulator.  It is noted that risks associated with some health and social care professions are managed in other ways at present, including self-assessment, peer review, employer oversight, disclosure checks, and inclusion in a voluntary register.

There are currently 9 regulators of healthcare professionals in the UK, regulating 34 professions. There are no proposals in the consultation to make any changes, other than mention of the recent decision that physician associates and anaesthetic associates will now be regulated by the GMC.  The government’s overall assessment is that “…the current make-up of regulated and unregulated professions strikes the right balance in addressing the risks posed by health and care professionals without imposing unwarranted burdens.” 

The consultation looks to the future and seeks views on:

• the proposed criteria to be used in assessing which professions should be regulated by statute, and specifically whether risk of harm to patients is the most important factor to consider when deciding whether to regulate a health or social care profession;
• whether there are regulated professions that no longer require statutory regulation; and
• whether there are unregulated professions that should be brought into statutory regulation.

Responses are invited before 31 March 2022.

BTO’s Professional Discipline and Clinical Defence team specialises in defending health and social care professionals, both regulated and unregulated. Please get in touch if you would like to discuss this topic or any other aspect of healthcare law.

Cara Docherty, Associate: cdo@bto.co.uk / 0141 221 8012