The Professional Standards Authority for Health and Social Care (PSA) has published its response to the Government consultation on healthcare regulation: deciding when statutory regulation is appropriate.
In its response, the PSA said:
“We welcome this consultation and the Government’s proposed approach to determining whether a group of health or social care workers should be regulated by law.
“The plans set out in the consultation mirror our own thinking, rooted in the Right-touch regulation (RTR) principle of regulating only where it is necessary to protect the public from risk of harm. Our work on a methodology for assessing the risks of an occupation, Right-touch assurance, which is referenced in the consultation, builds on this principle.
“At a time of accelerated change in the way that health and care services are delivered, it is right to ask whether the current scope of statutory professional regulation is protecting the public as effectively as possible. The powers for the Secretary of State and Scottish Ministers to bring new groups into professional regulation through secondary legislation are not new. However, the proposed extension of these powers to deregulation, and this accompanying consultation, are an opportunity to reconsider the scope of statutory regulation, and potentially to move to a model that is more agile and responsive.
“We are pleased to see references in the consultation to alternative means of assurance, including the Authority’s Accredited Registers (AR) programme. As we have stressed in our work on regulatory policy, statutory regulation is one of a range of possible means of protecting the public, which includes employer-led codes of practice, barring schemes and the AR programme.”
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