Health and Social Care Bill
The Department of Health (DH) are in the lead with the Bill which was published on 19 January 2011. The Bill contains areas of devolved competence which have been discussed and agreed with DH. A Legislative Consent Motion was lodged in the Scottish Parliament on 21 January 2011 (within 14 days of the Bill's publication) seeking consent to the UK Government legislating on its behalf in devolved areas of the Bill and the Cabinet Secretary appeared before the Health and Sports Committee on 23 February, giving evidence on the LCM for the Bill. The Health and Sports Committee recommended that Parliament grants legislative consent in their report of the 1 March and the motion was then taken to Scottish Parliament and agreed on the 9 March. The progress of the Bill is currently being paused at Westminster.
Provisions within the legislation include the Council for Healthcare Regulatory Excellence (CHRE) to be made more independent and become self-funded (partly through levies on the regulatory bodies) and to accredit voluntary registers for healthcare workers across the UK and social care workers in England only. CHRE will also be renamed Professional Standards Authority for Health and Social Care (PSAHSC). The health profession regulators will also be able to hold voluntary registers for unregulated professional or occupational groups and they and other organisations to be able to apply to the CHRE for accreditation of those registers.
The Appointments Commission, which currently takes forward appointments to the healthcare professions regulatory bodies on behalf of the Privy Council, is to be abolished. Provisions in the Bill provide for the Privy Council to arrange with others, including regulatory bodies and the CHRE, to assist with making regulatory body appointments.
The Health Act 1999 to be amended to allow, in England only, the regulation of social workers and social care workers to be put in place through "section 60" Orders. The General Social Services Council (GSCC) to be abolished and the regulation of social workers in England to be transferred to the Health Professions Council (HPC), which regulates a number of healthcare professions, including practitioner psychologists and operating department practitioners, whose regulation is devolved in Scotland.
The Office of the Health Professions Adjudicator (OHPA) was set up as a legal entity in early 2010. The intention was that further (reserved) legislation would be made to make the OHPA fully operational from April 2011, and that it would adjudicate for General Medical Council fitness to practise cases in the first instance. On 26 July 2010 the new Parliamentary Under Secretary of State at Westminster, Anne Milton, announced that the UK Government had been considering the case for proceeding with the work surrounding the OHPA; and that it was not persuaded that the creation of another body was necessarily the most appropriate and proportionate way forward in terms of adjudication. She confirmed that she believed that steps could be taken to strengthen and modernise existing systems within the GMC to deliver substantially the same benefits, then these steps could be reviewed and, in due course, applied to the other health regulators. A public consultation, which closed 11 October 2010, confirmed support for the option of having medical profession adjudication carried out by an independent board of the General Medical Council instead. The Health and Social Care Bill incorporates provisions to abolish OPHA.
Further information on legislation can be obtained from Jason Birch and Robert Girvan at the Regulatory Unit; jason.birch@scotland.gsi.gov.uk, robert.girvan@scotland.gsi.gov.uk