GMC welcomes government announcement on regulatory reform

The government has confirmed its commitment to prioritising the reform of healthcare professional regulation in the UK. We warmly welcome the plans to modernise the regulatory framework for doctors, a long-standing priority for the GMC.
The current legislation that governs our work is more than 40 years old and is complex, overly prescriptive, and slow to adapt. Reforming this will be a significant step towards creating legislation that better serves the needs of patients and the professionals we regulate, giving us the flexibility to respond more swiftly to patient safety risks and better support good practice.

The GMC’s Chief Executive and Registrar, Charlie Massey, said:

‘We welcome this announcement from the Minister of State for Health and Secondary Care.

‘Updating our antiquated legislation is a crucial step in enabling us to take a more responsive and flexible approach to regulation, and will make our processes simpler, faster and less adversarial.

‘We remain ready to progress this as soon as the Department for Health and Social Care lays the necessary legislation. We look forward to working with them, patients and our registrants to ensure we deliver effective, relevant and compassionate regulation that benefits patient safety and ensures public confidence in the professions we regulate.’

Regulatory reform will bring a range of benefits for patients and those on our register, including:

• Flexibility - the new legislation will allow us to change our own rules when improvements are needed. Currently, even minor improvements to our regulatory framework require extensive parliamentary time.
• Swifter and more efficient fitness to practise processes - reform will give us greater flexibility to conduct investigations proportionately and to resolve cases more quickly. This will enable us to address patient safety issues sooner, or close cases in a timely way where there is no current or ongoing risk to public protection.
• Less adversarial fitness to practice processes - our current process provides limited opportunity to resolve cases without going to a tribunal, even where a registrant would be prepared to accept the regulatory action proposed. This prolongs resolution, increasing stress for both the registrant and witnesses. In future, senior decision makers will be able to propose what action we should take to protect the public at the end of an investigation. If a registrant accepts a finding that their fitness to practise is impaired and the action proposed to address this, the matter can be resolved without a hearing, leading to a quicker, less stressful conclusion, while continuing to protect the public.
• Streamlined approach to registration - a new single legislative framework will make the registration process more accessible and flexible by ensuring all registrant groups are assessed consistently based on their qualifications, knowledge, skill and experience.
• Supporting registrants - by improving the efficiency and effectiveness of our current processes, we will be able to invest more of our resources in activities that support our registrants to give patients safe, high-quality care.