Regulation of Health and Social Care Professionals Consultation

must be lay or that there should be equal lay/registrant membership. This
approach has the advantage of flexibility since it gives the Government power to
alter the size and balance of Council membership to reflect political policy
changes.
4.50 Finally, the regulators could be given general powers to set the size and
composition of their Councils but the Government would retain default powers to
intervene if this is necessary in the public interest. This would afford the
regulators a significant degree of autonomy while also enabling the Government
to intervene as a last resort if, for example a regulator decided to establish a
disproportionately large Council or a majority of registrant members.
4.51 The governing legislation currently adopts different definitions of lay members.
We think that on this matter there should be some degree of consistency
between the regulators. Therefore, we propose that the statute would establish
the following definitions:
(1) a lay member is any person who is not and has not been entered in the
register of that particular regulatory body; and
(2) a registrant member is any person who is entered in the register of that
particular regulatory body.
4.52 As noted above, these definitions are already used by most of the regulators.
However, some regulators have adopted more stringent definitions of a lay
member. It would be possible under our scheme for individual regulators through
rules to set additional requirements above and beyond the legal definition of a lay
member. For example, regulators could provide that lay members must never
have been entered in the register of any health or social care professional
regulator or have not in the last 12 months been involved in the training,
education and employment of the relevant profession. But it would not be
possible for the regulators to go below the proposed statutory definition.
4.53 It has been suggested to us that the current definitions of a lay member are too
narrow and reduce the pool of potential Council members. In particular, it has
been put forward that a person should be entitled to sit as a lay member
providing they have not been registered within a certain period of time (for
example 10 years). The risk of course is professional domination by the back
door, but this may be a relatively low risk. We welcome comments on this
suggestion. On balance we think that our proposed definition would ensure that a
lay member is fully independent of the registered professions and is in keeping
which the expectations that most members of the public would have of a lay
member.
4.54 Finally, it has been pointed out to us that a significant number of Council
members also serve concurrently as members of other Councils. Some see this
as impacting negatively on the image of the regulators by suggesting an old-boys
network, while others argue that experience of Council membership is an
important attribute of a member. We welcome views on whether or not cross
Council membership impacts negatively on the image of the regulators, and
whether this should be prohibited or retained in our scheme.
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