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Health and Social Care Bill

I feel I should mark the fact that we have now reached Part 2 of the Bill, which deals with the reform of professional regulation. Since this is a brand new topic for the Committee, I thought I would say a few words before I address the issue raised by the noble Earl—and it is a delight to have him with us again. As noble Lords know, in recent years there have been a number of high-profile inquiries, such as the Shipman inquiry, into doctors who have harmed their patients. These inquiries have highlighted serious failings in the system of professional regulation and undermined the confidence of patients and professionals in the existing system. The Government have looked carefully at the recommendations of those inquiries, which have informed how professional regulation for all health and social care professionals should and could be modernised and improved more generally. Consultation resulted in a White Paper, published in February last year. The Bill carries forward the primary legislative elements of that White Paper. Before we go into detail on the measures in Committee, I emphasise that they are only part of a wider reform programme. The amendments spoken to by the noble Earl—Amendments Nos. 117, 138, 154, 157 and 160—deal with a number of matters raised in the eighth report of the Joint Committee on Human Rights, which were tabled by the JCHR on Report in the other place and debated at that point. The Government recognise the need to improve human rights training and to embed human rights in the training and induction programmes of all staff in health and social care. The Joint Committee set us the task of reporting at the Committee stage in this House on what progress we are making, and I hope that I will be able to do so. As the Joint Committee acknowledges in its report, The Human Rights of Older People in Healthcare, the department has taken steps to address these issues. We have published a report entitled Human Rights in Healthcare—A Framework for Local Action and we have undertaken pilots with five trusts. The pilots will be independently evaluated and, after that assessment, we will decide how to take recommendations forward. The Government agree that the regulatory bodies responsible for the basic education curricula and codes of professional ethics should consider how best to ensure that healthcare professionals understand their responsibilities. We have set up seven expert working groups to advise on the implementation of the White Paper, Trust, Assurance and Safety, and we expect two of those working groups, the Medical Education and Revalidation Working Group and the Non-Medical Revalidation Working Group, to look at this important area. In preparation for that major piece of work, we have already written to key stakeholders, including the Council for Healthcare Regulatory Excellence, the health regulatory bodies, the strategic health authority education commissioners, Universities UK, the Council of Deans of UK University Faculties for Nursing and Health Professions and the Medical Schools Council to seek their advice on how best to take forward this agenda. Of course, in looking at what more needs to be done, it is important to recognise the good things that are already happening. Health and social care professionals currently receive training on human rights as part of their academic studies. Regulatory bodies already include references to human rights issues in their ethical guidance. For example, the framework for undergraduate education of dentists refers to the Human Rights Act, and the document Standards for Dental Professionals has a section on—