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General and Specialist Medical Practice (Education, Training and Qualifications) Order 2010

My Lords, I, too, welcome the order. The transfer of functions, which, as we have heard, was recommended in Sir John Tooke’s independent inquiry into modernising medical careers, is widely supported, with responses to a recent consultation on the draft order overwhelmingly positive. This legislation is one of the final stages of a merger which is already well under way and which will bring a number of benefits, including the rationalisation of medical education and training regulation, a single point of contact for key interest groups, a more efficient delivery of functions and the enhanced opportunity to share best practice. I also welcome the current review by the noble Lord, Lord Patel, of the regulation of medical education and training and its focus on the developments needed to achieve an appropriate and modern approach to regulating medical education and training. I am reassured to hear that fees for trainee doctors completing specialist GP training, or seeking certification via the equivalence routes, will be frozen at the current levels for the 2010-11 period and I welcome the news that the GMC will hold a consultation on a future fees framework later this year. I have three questions for the Minister. In view of the current problems with an out-of-hours doctor making a very serious mistake, can she confirm that the single competent authority for medical education, or the GMC, will ensure that all doctors will have to show and prove an ability to be able to communicate in English with both colleagues and patients? Is she aware of any similar plans to transfer postgraduate dental education to the General Dental Council, or does the Specialist Dental Education Board, which sounds as if it deals just with specialist training, cover all postgraduate dental training, so that there is no need for any change? Does she not agree that plans for re-inclusion on the register in the event of an emergency such as a major pandemic, which is covered in this order for the medical profession, would also be beneficial to the dental profession?