continuing primary legislation or the Orders creating the new bodies referred to
above, the regulation of the several related groups is set to continue in a frag-
mented and unco-ordinated manner until that situation is changed by a new Act of
Parliament at some future stage. It seems that the `joined up government' philo-
sophy has yet to reach this part of Government's thinking.
3.4 Regulation of nursing ± the short term prospect
From all of that it would seem that the immediate prospect for the regulation of the
nursing, midwifery and health visiting professions, when an Order in Council
establishing a new body for that purpose has been approved, is for a new Council
much as described by J.M. Consulting; that is, a Council of no more than 27
members, with a majority drawn from the professions and at least one third of lay
members. Once again lay' is not explained, sustaining the prospect that many of the places so defined will be filled by persons who are onlylay' in the sense that
they are not nurses, midwives or health visitors. The other J.M. Consulting
recommendations, and the Government's response to them, relate to functions,
structures and style. They do not address the fundamental point of whether
`professional self-regulation' in the form it has existed since the creation of the
General Medical Council in 1858 is sustainable or to be preferred in the twenty-
first century. I could only hope that the Government, through the future Order in
Council, in spite of the constraints it had imposed upon itself, would do more than
simply tamper around the edges of the existing system.
3.4.1 An international contribution
In this context it seems wise for those who draft the proposed Order to look
beyond our own shores. While, particularly since 1997, the intention to
strengthen the existing systems of professional self-regulation' [10] has been expressed, the subject of professional regulation has been under review elsewhere. In 1997 the International Council of Nurses .ICN) published the result of its work to review its position statement on regulation. This document,ICN on Reg- ulation: Towards 21st Centur yModels[11], restates the twelve principles enunciated in the previous version of the statement, but supports them with fresh narrative. Several of these principles have particular relevance to the UK debate and could usefully be used as a template against which to assess the contents first of a proposed draft Order .perhaps even the preparation of that draft), and subse- quently of the procedures and processes that the UKCC's replacement adopts. The first of these principles might be regarded as a statement of the glaringly obvious, but the obvious does sometimes need stating. It readsRegulation should
be directed towards an explicit purpose'. The text that follows opens by
contending that The overriding purpose of the statutory regulation of nursing is that of service to and protection of the public'. Later it asserts thatBenefits to the
profession and individual practitioners are secondary and, although they can be
significant, do not of themselves provide justification for statutory regulation'.
The next principle ± equally obvious, but equally important ± states that `Since
The Professional Dimension 39