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EUC Report: Healthcare Professionals

My Lords, I thank all noble Lords who have taken part in today's debate. It was heartening to hear so much consensus across the House on the issues that have been raised by the inquiry and in our subsequent report. As I said earlier, I was pleased that the noble Viscount, Lord Bridgeman, joined the committee after having initiated a debate about language. I am very grateful to him for his diligence in pursuing that issue. It has to be said that he also has a very well rounded view of the whole set of issues involved in this report, although his focus has been on language-testing and so on. I think we all want to see something unequivocal and unambiguous in relation to language-testing to which we can subscribe. I am grateful, too, to the noble Lord, Lord Dykes, for helping to put the report in a wider context. That is important, as is flagging up the fact that we feel that mobility is a good thing. We benefit from it, as we have done for many years and will continue to do. The question is really how we make the balance between the desirability of mobility and patient safety work. Of course, the noble Lord is correct to point out that we are talking about a very low incidence of fatal and serious impacts arising from the mobility of inappropriate practitioners. By the same token, as I think the noble Viscount, Lord Bridgeman, said, one is one too many, and that is what we have to tackle. In fact, somebody brought to my attention another very worrying incident concerning a doctor who has left a trail behind him on mainland Europe. Therefore, we have to be vigilant on those issues. The noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, again emphasised the issue of benefiting from free movement. It can sometimes be easy to lose sight of that when we discuss and focus on what are, essentially, problems. I am glad that she raised continuing professional development, which the Minister picked up and went into in some depth. Again, many of us would agree that it is an absolutely crucial area. During our evidence-taking, we heard the example of someone from outside the UK who had trained as a midwife 20 years ago and had no professional development subsequent to that. That is an area in which there have been lots of advances in many different ways. The idea that someone who first trained 20 years ago and has not practised since could come into midwifery here is quite disturbing. Therefore, CPD is very important. I will not pick up on everything; it has been a long day. I will just deal with the professional card, which is another area on which we agree. It is interesting to note that at the conference called by Healthcare Professionals Crossing Borders in Brussels a couple of weeks ago, that was something of which some people were in favour while others had deep concerns about it. I should also say that most people at that gathering had deep concerns about language. It is not only us who have these anxieties about how and what point we test language. Part of the problem is that the complexity is there anyway but there are other layers of complexity to do with all the different systems that are in place in different member states. There are even different ways of thinking about registration. Some member states separate registration from licensing, which we do not. Therefore, if we say that something can come into play at the point of registration, it will mean something different in different places. All that complexity means that it is even more crucial that we have absolute clarity and push forward. I reiterate how pleased I am that there is so much consensus on the areas in which we need to make progress, and that the Government are taking up those areas and working with organisations such as the GMC to ensure that we maintain and enhance a balance between mobility and patient safety. In conclusion, it is absolutely right for me to acknowledge the unequivocal pleasure and delight of working with Sub-Committee G and my colleagues on it, who are represented today by the noble Viscount, Lord Bridgeman. We worked very hard on the report, as noble Lords can see. We did a lot of questioning and reflecting, which paid off in producing a report that many people have referred to. When I go to meetings in Brussels and elsewhere, people brandish copies of the report, which is heartening to see. I also thank the staff, particularly Talitha Rowland and Alistair Dillon, for their work on the report. The debate today has, typically, been very informative and well informed. It points to the ways in which different parts of the House and our society can work together to ensure that we achieve the balance that we all seek. I beg to move. Motion agreed.