and Midwifer yCouncil[19] orModernising Regulation: The New Health Professions
Council[20] appear to have addressed what I see as the fundamental issues.
One passage in the NHS Plan holds out what I regard as some modest hope.
Paragraph 10.15 states that:
`There also needs to be formal coordination between the health regulatory
bodies. For this reason a UK Council of Health Regulators will be established
including ...'It then names the eight existing health regulatory bodies or their intended
successors. It then adds, in a sentence on which I hang my limited hopes of more
radical change:
`In the first instance the new body would help co-ordinate and act as a forum in
which common approaches across the professions could be developed for
dealing with matters such as complaints against practitioners. Were concerns to
remain about the individual regulatory bodies its role could evolve.'But that statement, intended no doubt to be reassuring, begs more questions than
it answers. How will it be composed? Will it be an overarching body with real
authority? Will it have a genuinely lay majority? Will it have sufficient indepen-
dence of the constituent bodies to bring to ministers the recommendation that its
role should evolve, possibly to replace them? Until these questions are answered
the prospect remains of a revised system that is more an expedient response than a
genuine solution to a matter of genuine public interest.
3.5.3 The draft Nursing and Midwifery Order 2001
And now, just as my final deadline for submission of this chapter is reached, from
the Department of Health there has emerged the documentEstablishing the new
Nursing and Midwifer yCouncil[21] This text, open for consultation until 1 June
2001, introduces and explains the draft Nursing and Midwifery Order that fills
most of its pages. So how does it look, measured against my own views and the
opinions of others I have quoted? I feel that the best I can say is that it makes some
significant gestures towards these concerns, but still falls well short of achieving a
satisfactory outcome and still reflects an unwillingness to really grasp the regula-
tion nettle. Limitations of space allow me to comment on only a few aspects of the
draft Order.
Does the text make clear the purpose of the intended legislation? Not, regret-
tably, with a clear statement of purpose. It does, however, .at clause 3 .4).a)) state
that:
`In performing its functions the Council shall treat the health and well-being of
persons using or needing the services of registrants as paramount.'Does it at least edge towards the `stakeholder' concept? Perhaps it does a little, but
in a very cautious way. Clause 3.4).c) will require the new Council to:
44 Nursing Law and Ethics