Andrew Rosindell – 2015 Parliamentary Question to the Department of Health

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Andrew Rosindell on 2015-12-07.

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what steps he is taking to ensure that the implementation of European Professional Cards for doctors does not inhibit his Department’s ability to perform background checks on doctors from European countries and to ensure that they meet the medical qualification standards required by the NHS.

Ben Gummer

The European Professional Card (EPC) will not be introduced for doctors until 2018 at the earliest. The European Commission will review the effectiveness of the EPC process for the first wave of professions, which includes nurses, pharmacists and physiotherapists, before any decision is taken to extend the EPC to other professions.

In the United Kingdom, independent health regulators are responsible for performing checks on health professionals from European countries to ensure that they meet agreed standards of fitness to practise. For doctors, this role is undertaken by the General Medical Council.

Although under the EPC system the responsibility for carrying out initial background checks will transfer to the home regulator of the professional, UK regulators will continue to be able to carry out registration checks, and can require additional information if there are any justifiable doubts about a registrant’s application or fitness to practise.

The UK Government has negotiated new safeguards to ensure that the high standards we expect from staff in this country are met by those from elsewhere in Europe who come to work here. These include:

– the introduction of an EU-wide alert mechanism which regulators will use to inform other countries of professionals who have been restricted from practising; and

– applying language controls for healthcare professionals from the EU so that regulators are able to ensure that professionals have the necessary knowledge of English before they are able to work in the UK.