My Lords, I declare an interest as co-chair of the All-Party Group on Speech and Language Difficulties.
On 6 May, the chief executives of the British Dietetic Association, the Royal College of Occupational Therapists, the Society of Radiographers, and the Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists, and the chair of the British and Irish Orthoptic Society collectively wrote a letter to Jo Churchill, the Minister responsible for taking the Bill through the other place, in which they appealed for extended prescribing rights, in view of the range of benefits that they would provide to patient care and the potential savings to the NHS that would result. In particular, they pointed out that such rights would result in better support and more timely care for the patients they worked with, and improved patient safety, because allied health professionals, with appropriate expertise, were often best placed to make safe medical decisions. This is particularly apposite during the problems posed by Covid-19, because patients in the community may have to wait for weeks or months for assessment or continuance of treatment.
On 10 June, I and my co-chair of the APG, Geraint Davies MP, also wrote to the Minster, welcoming her response during the processing of the Bill in the Commons, in which she said that it would give the Government powers to extend prescribing responsibilities to professional groups where it was safe and appropriate to do so. In this connection, I note the comments on delegated powers in the damning report of the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee, published on 22 July, to which other noble Lords have already referred.
The Minister responded to our letter on 12 August, saying that the Bill will allow the Government to continue to update the professions that can prescribe medicines where it is safe and appropriate to do so, without, however, specifying which professions. To date, the professional organisations that wrote to the Minister in May have not received a reply.
All requests by professional organisations for the grant of prescribing rights will need to be subject to intense consultation before they are granted and any resulting recommendations subject to parliamentary scrutiny, as the Delegated Powers Committee points out. Will the Minister say whether that is HMG’s intention and to which professions they plan to give prescribing rights?
3.40 pm