Health and Social Care Bill

My Lords, I shall speak also to Amendments 338ZB, 338F and 339ZB. We return to a regulatory issue. Amendments 338ZA and 339ZB are new clauses relating to the power to regulate clinical physiologists in England. Amendment 338ZB is a new clause requiring clinical physiologists to be registered by the Health Professions Council. Amendment 338F says that the Health Professions Council, in exercising its functions, shall co-operate with the regulation of clinical physiology in England and with the provision, supervision or management of services of people engaging in clinical physiology in England. The noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, has an amendment in this group and we support what she is proposing. I am sure that other noble Lords have received the helpful briefing note from the Registration Council for Clinical Physiologists, which highlights that the Government’s current approach—a preference for voluntary registration, as the Minister outlined in the previous debate—has been applied to clinical physiologists, despite a recommendation from the Health Professions Council in 2004 for statutory regulation. The RCCP has a substantial amount of evidence suggesting that, in the case of clinical physiologists, voluntary self-regulation is not as effective as statutory regulation. In the Command Paper Enabling Excellence: Autonomy and Accountability for Health and Social Care Staff, the Government stated that statutory regulation would be considered for those professions where a compelling patient safety case could be made and be supported by an evidence-based cost-benefit risk analysis. Ten months later, though, no such risk assessment has been undertaken, and the RCCP continues to believe that clinical physiologists should be statutorily regulated. The disciplines that are covered by clinical physiology are audiology, cardiology, gastrointestinal physiology, neurophysiology and respiratory physiology. Clinical physiologists work directly with patients, performing sensitive procedures such as assessments of pacemakers, testing lung function and assessing and diagnosing hearing loss. Many of the procedures performed by clinical physiologists in the UK are performed by statutorily regulated professionals in much of western Europe and by clinicians in the United States. A body that I have mentioned, the Registration Council for Clinical Physiologists, maintains a voluntary register of clinical physiologists in the UK and Northern Ireland. It has more than 5,000 registrants across a number of different disciplines in clinical physiology. These professionals play an integral part in the process of diagnosis and treatment, undertaking procedures such as ECGs, which pose significant risks to patients. That, really, is the point here. While the profession as a whole enjoys an excellent reputation and high standards of working practice, the continued lack of statutory regulation for its registrants means that there will continue to be gaps in its oversight, which comes with inherent risks to patients. Therefore, we believe that the Government’s preference for regulation through assured voluntary registration is not sufficient for this particular group of healthcare workers. They need to be statutorily protected; a voluntary scheme is not sufficient and there is a threat to patient safety. I hope that the Government will consider this a reasonable request on the profession’s part. I have to say that I fail to understand why this has not been taken forward and I hope that the Minister will be able to explain to the Committee why clinical physiology cannot have statutory regulation in the context of patient protection. I beg to move.