Health Minister (): Today, we are launching a
consultation for the General Medical Council (GMC) which aims to
bring healthcare professional regulation into the 21st
century.
The consultation will provide a basis on which to tackle
inefficiencies, slow processes, and bureaucratic barriers to
change, thereby enabling faster, fairer and more forward-looking
regulation. This is necessary for more effective protection of
patients and the public.
For years there have been frequent calls from regulators,
professions, and the public to make healthcare professional
regulation more modern and efficient. These were reflected in
recommendations by the Law Commission in 2014 and further
substantiated by responses to the Regulating Healthcare
Professionals, Protecting the Public, policy consultation in
2021.
The principal objectives of the draft General Medical Council
Order 2026 are:
- To introduce a modern and agile regulatory framework for
medical practitioners, physician associates and anaesthesia
associates in the United Kingdom.
- The GMC will be able to consult and amend its rules more
efficiently as these will no longer require Privy Council
approval. This will allow GMC to respond to external events in a
timely manner which should lead to swifter and stronger public
protection.
- To provide the GMC with enhanced flexibility to set standards
for education and training in different forms, for example formal
teaching or digital learning and settings for example, clinical
settings or community based settings, which will ensure high
quality for all educators and learners.
- To provide a duty on the GMC to hold a single register,
rather than multiple registers as it does currently. The register
will be clearly divided into parts for each profession the GMC
regulates. This will make it easier for the public and patients
to find and understand registration information about the GMC's
registrants.
- To reform registration powers so the GMC can amend
requirements flexibly, ensuring swifter adaptations to workforce
needs and regulatory developments.
- To overhaul the fitness to practise process to make it
swifter, fairer and less adversarial, thereby strengthening
public protection and improving the experience for all parties
involved. This will further support the work GMC has already done
to eliminate bias in its fitness to practice processes.
- To establish a framework which may be used for future reforms
to the other healthcare professional regulators, enabling faster
and more consistent cross-regulator outcomes.
The proposed legislation also delivers several review
recommendations which pertain to healthcare professional
regulation.
The Noble Lord Mann's review into antisemitism and other forms of
racism in the NHS recommends implementing a number of measures to
strengthen the safeguards relating to healthcare professional
regulation.
These include the GMC retaining its existing right to appeal
Fitness to Practise Panel decisions to the Courts, strengthening
the powers of the Professional Standards Authority for Health and
Social Care (PSA) by permitting them to require information from
regulators, strengthening the PSA's appeal rights, and allowing
the PSA to request that specific fitness to practise decisions
made by case examiners are revised. These measures will
strengthen the oversight of the regulatory system and demonstrate
the government's commitment to stamping out racism and
discrimination at all levels of the healthcare system. Work is
underway to finalise a range of further recommendations from the
Mann review, which will be shared in due course.
The consultation also seeks views on recommendation 1 and 9 of
the Leng review which recommended that the roles of "Physician
Associate' and 'Anaesthesia Associate' be re-named 'Physician
Assistant' and 'Physician Assistant in Anaesthesia',
respectively, to ensure clarity for patients.
The proposed UK-wide changes laid out in the consultation are
crucial in ensuring the GMC is fit for purpose and can ensure
protection of the public to the best of its ability.
