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Health Professions: Migrant Workers

Answer

The information requested is not held by the Department. The nine health and care professional regulatory bodies within the United Kingdom are responsible for operational matters concerning the discharge of their statutory duties including fitness-to-practise (FtP) investigations in respect of their registrants. Relevant information provided by the General Medical Council (GMC) and General Dental Council (GDC) is included below.

The GMC reports that four European Economic Area (EEA) doctors and no non-EEA doctors have appeared at a tribunal due wholly or partly to lack of English language skills, since its legislation changed in June 2014 to introduce inadequate English language skills as a grounds for finding a doctor’s fitness to practise is impaired. Of the four, two were suspended and two had conditions imposed on their registration. Conditions restrict a doctor’s practice or require them to take remedial action. In these cases, the purpose of conditions is to help protect patients while allowing the doctor to remedy any deficiencies in their practice or knowledge of English. This amends the answer given in PQ25540 on 8 February 2016.

In addition, since the GMC was given new powers in relation to the language skills of doctors, it has dealt with 3,289 registration applications from EEA doctors. 1,970 of them were able to demonstrate that they met the English language requirements as part of their application and were granted registration with a licence to practise. 1,319 doctors were registered but have not been granted a licence to practise either because they did not provide any evidence of their English language skills or the evidence they provided was insufficient. Doctors cannot practise in the United Kingdom without a licence to practise.

The GDC has been taking the requirement to be sufficiently fluent in written and spoken English into account when assessing FtP cases since it updated its Standards in 2013. Since this change there has been one EEA dentist brought before a FtP panel who was not suspended where the category of ‘not fluent in English’ was recorded as consideration. The decision of the FtP panel was to remove this dentist from the GDC register.

Secondary information

Type

Written question

Reference

26745

Session

2015-16

Subjects

Health professions English language Migrant workers Standards

Link

View this Written question on www.parliament.uk