Health and Care Bill — House of Lords, 2022-01-26
Topic: Health
Ilora Gillian Finlay (Crossbench, Unknown): My Lords, as I address Amendment 266, I should declare that I am a vice-president of the Chartered Institute of Environmental Health. I stress that this amendment has been supported by the Beauty Industry Group, which represents 10 industry organisations—two voluntary registers for cosmetic practitioners, the Mental Health Foundation and others There are currently significant gaps in our regulatory system. Environmental health and licensing professionals work at a local authority level. They inspect, register and license premises for a very limited set of procedures, such as acupuncture, tattoos and piercing. Even for these procedures, however, there are no nationally set training programmes or qualification requirements for somebody to practise. For the riskier beauty procedures, such as the injectables, there are only voluntary registers of accredited practitioners. They have some approved education and training but that is not mandatory That means that there are many unaccredited practitioners on the high street providing services to people directly with no checks. A licensing scheme, as outlined in the amendment, would provide appropriate qualification and competency standards for practitioners wishing to practise, which is key to improving safety. The amendment as drafted is an open power for the Secretary of State, so it is easily amended as new procedures come online and on to the marketplace. The weakness of existing legislation in the area is that it fails to cover many of the newer treatments that are now popular When things go wrong, it is the NHS that has to pick up the pieces. Infections, injuries, scarring, burns and allergic reactions from a range of procedures often all end up in the NHS, sometimes with people being hospitalised and disfigured. Injection of fillers—or botulinum toxins—into blood vessels can cause dying back of tissues as well as blindness when administered by people who really are not adequately trained and certainly not registered. That means that there is no recompense for people damaged by these practitioners, who have no medical insurance or qualifications. In addition, there are unauthorised advertisements that breach advertising standards. There are strict laws around prescription-only medicines such as botulinum toxin, but these advertisements seem to bypass those Among members of the public who have had cosmetic procedures, alarmingly, three-quarters were given no information about the product, volume, brand or batch number of whatever was being used and just under three-quarters were not asked anything at all about their psychosocial or mental health or any body image issues. It is a vast and complex area and there are gaps in regulations. We need a national framework of standards with qualifications that can be recognised, so that there is a clear badge for members of the public To briefly address Amendment 297, I suggest that it is not needed because dermatological surgery and plastic surgery are subsections of medical practice and already registered with the General Medical Council. This gets nearer to credentialling than to requiring a separate qualification. These are doctors. They are highly trained, they have gone through a recognised training programme and they have been often examined as part of their exit from their training in whatever procedure they are undertaking I remind the Committee that, in a recent letter from the right honourable Michael Gove, he said that he is considering a licensing scheme. I hope the Government will see that this amendment would allow such a scheme without tying the Government down, and I hope that they will accept it, as well as Amendment 264 from the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, for which I should declare that I am an honorary fellow of the of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh and the Royal College of Emergency Medicine. I think the contents of the amendment would go wider than simply surgical procedures. The Royal College of Emergency Medicine was established as a separate medical college in 2008, but the guidance and regulations were written prior to that, so they are completely out of date for what is now emerging as a major specialty across medicine. That amendment would rectify a lacuna.