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Dentists Act 1984 (Amendment) Order 2005

rose to move, That the draft order laid before the House on 26 May be approved [2nd Report from the Merits Committee]. One The noble Lord said: My Lords, this is an order about patients. It will improve the way that the General Dental Council protects patients and increase patient choice by, first, setting standards for the profession and taking action when a dentist falls below those standards; secondly, by regulating the whole dental team; and, thirdly, by introducing compulsory indemnity cover. More than 70 individuals and organisations responded to consultation, the vast majority supporting the proposals. The order is part of the Government’s programme to modernise the regulation of health professions. It updates the legal framework for dentistry in line with the model for other professions and has been developed with the General Dental Council. Amending legislation, such as this, can be hard to follow. We have therefore supplied a version of the Dentists Act ““as it would look””. I will summarise the main changes that the order brings about. The first concerns indemnity cover. Article 16 introduces a legal requirement to have such cover. That is important for patient protection. At present, regulators tell professionals that they need to be adequately insured, but may not find out that someone is uninsured until after the event, leaving the patient without compensation. The next change concerns fitness to practise. This updates how the General Dental Council deals with an allegation that a dentist’s fitness to practise is impaired. Our policy is that the same legal approach ought to apply to a problem with any health professional. These changes take that agenda forward. The General Dental Council can currently deal with misconduct or health problems. It has difficulty dealing with poor professional performance—the ability to do the job—and the order will resolve that. The GDC has limited options to deal with impaired fitness to practise: it can strike someone off, suspend their registration or do nothing. The order will provide   an additional option: to impose conditions on registration such as the requirement to undertake further training, or be chaperoned when with a female patient. The final change is regulating professions complementary to dentistry. Currently two groups, dental therapists and hygienists, are registered under enrolled status. The order will bring the regulation of those two groups to a comparable footing with the regulation of dentists. It will also allow the General Dental Council, with parliamentary approval, to bring other groups, such as dental nurses and dental technicians, into regulation. That will allow redesign of care around patient need. Professions complementary to dentistry will be subject to rigorous standards of training, conduct, health and performance and these are set out in this section. These are worthwhile reforms that will make a real difference to patients. I beg to move. Moved, That the draft order laid before the House on 26 May be approved [2nd Report from the Merits Committee].—(Lord Warner.)