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Medical Profession (Miscellaneous Amendments) Order 2008

The Committee will be grateful to the Minister for introducing the order, to which I have no objection in principle. At the moment, as the Minister made clear, the Education Committee of the GMC has the statutory function of overseeing medical education. I accept the arguments that she outlined for transferring those functions to the council of the GMC. One question that arises from that is whether, in the process of that transfer, anything of value will be lost. I am sure that the Minister will confidently assure me that the answer to that is no, but, to play devil’s advocate for a moment, one advantage of having a separate committee to oversee medical education and nothing but medical education has been its focus. We have had a group of people who have developed experience and specialist expertise in this important area and, although I accept the argument that the council itself should operate in a way that places education at the centre of its deliberations, it could still have done that without the Education Committee being done away with. It is arguable that there may be at least a temporary loss of corporate knowledge and expertise by dint of the transfer and possibly a temporary loss of focus and progress. How is that issue to be dealt with? As we have heard, the amendments to the 2003 order will allow the GMC to provide a mechanism to enable senior consultants who did apply for inclusion in the specialist register at the time it was established to make a late application to the GMC. This will reinstate the powers that the GMC had prior to September 2005. Again this provision appears sensible. However, I have two queries. As I understand the position, if a consultant is not on the register, he or she is not eligible for recertification and can therefore escape that whole process. Once the order comes into force, I do not understand what is to oblige a consultant who is not registered to apply to have their name entered on the register, beyond simply the terms of the consultant’s contract. Secondly, perhaps the Minister can assure me that there is no suggestion that the changes proposed in this statutory instrument may have the effect of unintentionally slowing down the recertification procedure for consultants. How many consultants are thought to want to avail themselves of the ability to make a late application? Is the GMC resourced properly to meet the likely demand on top of all its other administrative responsibilities?