Clause 33 - Regulation of the profession of pharmacy
NHS Reform and Health Care Professions Bill
10:45 am
Mr John Hutton (Minister of State, Department of Health; Barrow and Furness, Labour)
I would be happy to do that for the hon. Gentleman. The clause's purpose is to remove a limitation on the scope of section 60 of the Health Act 1999 that makes it potentially less useful and flexible for pharmacy than for the other regulated professions. I should emphasise to the Committee that this is an enabling measure and we do not have a specific immediate use in mind for the extended power. The clause will make a small but important change to the section 60 order-making power that will allow us to modify the regulation of the health care professions.
The section 60 power permits the creation, modification and amendment of legislation about the regulation of the health care professions to be done by order, which is subject to various limitations and procedural safeguards. We introduced the power in the Health Act 1999 to make it more efficient to keep the relevant legislation up to date without sacrificing appropriate and proper parliamentary scrutiny. The Government have had problems finding suitable legislative opportunities for professional regulation when there is queue of amendments that must be made.
Section 60 applies to all health care professions, but the legislation governing pharmacy is slightly unusual. For most professions there is one main Act—for example the Medical Act 1983 or the Opticians Act 1989—but the legislation dealing with pharmacy is split between the Pharmacy Act 1954 and the Medicines Act 1968. Most of the 1968 Act concerns the regulatory framework for the safe use of medicines. When we first took the section 60 power, we decided that it should be limited largely to the amendment of sections 80 to 83 of the 1968 Act, which, unlike the rest of that Act, concern the powers of the statutory committee of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society—the society's disciplinary tribunal—and its counterpart in Northern Ireland in relation to retail pharmacy businesses. Our discussions with the society have made it clear that there are other parts of the 1968 Act that may need to be amended as part of a package of possible future reforms to modernise the regulation of pharmacy that could cover section 79 about the use of certain titles, or even section 132 about the definition of pharmacists.
We do not intend to do either of those two things, but they are examples of areas in which we do not currently have section 60 order-making powers. If we were to leave section 60 as it is, we would be unable fully to utilise the benefits of the order-making process in that section in relation to pharmacy. Future reform of the pharmacy profession might have to be a mixture of section 60 orders and primary legislation, because that would be the only way in which we could modify the provisions outside sections 80 and 83.
That would be unhelpful, and would make reform subject to the vagaries of the parliamentary timetable, which would be a great shame. Pharmacy is a profession with an integral and growing role in this country's health care. The Royal Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain has shown itself keen to bring its regulatory framework up to date and to work in collaboration with the Government and the other regulatory bodies. I am happy to say that that society has confirmed that it supports the clause.
It would be more effective to extend the scope of section 60 as a means of regulating the profession in the future so that it covers the whole of the Medicines Act 1968, but only in so far as that relates to the regulation of the pharmacy profession in Great Britain. That will bring the position for pharmacy more into line with that for the other professions, and mean that developments in the regulatory framework for pharmacy will not be unnecessarily held up, nor fall behind those of the other professions.