Regula+e - General Pharmaceutical Council

Being proportionate
Law
Commission’s
review of
regulation
Tim Spencer-Lane of
the Law Commission
explains
The Law Commission has recently
launched a consultation on the
regulation of health care professionals in
the UK and social workers in England.
The consultation runs to 31 May. Tim
Spencer-Lane from the Law Commission
provides a brief outline of the key
proposals.
The regulatory bodies covered by the
review include the General
Pharmaceutical Council, General Medical
Council, General Dental Council, and
Nursing and Midwifery Council. The
project is the first trilateral joint project
between the Law Commission, Scottish
Law Commission and Northern Ireland
Law Commission.
The regulators operate within a wide
variety of legal frameworks which have
been agreed and amended by
Parliament in different ways and at
different times over the past 150 years.
A complex legislative landscape has
evolved on a piecemeal basis resulting in
a wide range of idiosyncrasies and
inconsistency in the powers, duties and
responsibilities of each of the regulators.
Our proposed structure would consist of
a single Act of Parliament to provide the
legal framework for the regulators (as
well as the Council for Healthcare
Regulatory Excellence). In effect, all the
existing governing statutes and orders
would be repealed.
The broad aim of the proposals is to
enhance the autonomy of the
professional regulators in the exercise of
their statutory responsibilities and
enable the regulators to adopt their own
approaches to professional regulation in
the light of their circumstances and
resources.
This would be achieved largely by
reducing the regulators’ dependence on
the Privy Council (and through it, the
Department of Health). The regulators
would be given broad powers to make or
amend rules concerning the exercise of
their functions and governance without
any direct oversight by Parliament or
Government.
However, these broad powers would be
subject to certain safeguards, such as a
duty to consult widely, and
accountability hearings before the
House of Commons Health Committee
and the devolved assemblies. The
Government would also be given default
powers to intervene where a regulator
has failed or is likely to fail to perform
any of its functions.
The consultation extends to all the main
functions of the professional regulators
including establishing and maintaining a
register, and approving and setting
standards for education, conduct and
ongoing practice, and the investigation
and adjudication of fitness to practise
cases. It also extends to business
regulation and the powers and duties of
some of the regulators to register bodies
corporate or regulate businesses, such
as the General Pharmaceutical Council.
The consultation period will last for
three months (the closing date for
responses is 31 May 2012), and the final
report and draft Bill are expected to be
published in 2014.
We emphasise that the proposals in our
consultation paper represent our initial
view about how the law should be
reformed. We will review our proposals
on the basis of the responses received
during the consultation period. We
encourage all readers to respond.
The consultation paper and summary
are available to download from the Law
Commission’s website at:
www.lawcommission.justice.gov.uk/
Tim Spencer-Lane
Upholding standards and public trust in pharmacy 11