Dame Janet Smith recommended in the Shipman Report that the adjudication stage of the Fitness to Practise procedures of the General Medical Council should be undertaken by a body independent of the Council. The new body should appoint and train lay and medically qualified panellists and take on the task of appointing case managers, legal assessors (if they were still required) and any necessary specialist advisers as well as providing administrative support for the hearings.

That led, under the last government, to the creation of the Office of the Health Professions Adjudicator (OHPA) although it is not yet fully operational. Whilst it was expected to take over the role of adjudicating on fitness to practise cases from the GMC from April 2011, the coalition government has expressed a desire to get rid of it but has indicated it will consult on its future.

Anne Milton, The Ministerial Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for the Department of Health announced the government’s intention in a written statement. Having reviewed the case for OHPA the government is not persuaded that the creation of another body is necessarily the most appropriate and proportionate way forward in terms of adjudication. The government believes that steps can be taken to strengthen and modernise existing systems within the GMC to deliver substantially the same benefits as OHPA. The learning from these steps could then be reviewed and in due course applied to other health regulators.

In a recent interview Dame Janet Smith told BBC One’s Inside Out North West that not enough changes had been made since her inquiry. But those in the health sector will applaud the decision not to waste more public money, time and upheaval on the creation of what will be, in effect, just another QUANGO. The GMC has learned many lessons in the years that have passed since Shipman. It is now the premier healthcare regulator, a fact recognised by the Council for Healthcare Regulatory Excellence, which commented in its recent Review of Health Professional Regulatory Bodies: The public can be reassured that the GMC has achieved … high standards despite the particular challenges arising from the nature and work of the profession which it regulates.

Health Secretary, Andrew Lansley, has announced that the Health Professions Council is to regulate social workers from April 2012 as part of a shake up of the Department of Health’s arm’s length bodies.  The General Social Care Council will be abolished.

Only a few months ago the Council for Healthcare Regulatory Excellence (CHRE) published recommendations for improving the troubled social care regulator. The Secretary of State acknowledged that the GSCC had made good progress in recent months but in reality the costs of maintaining an independent regulator for social workers were prohibitive. The Department’s arm’s length bodies will be reduced from 18 to 10 resulting in a saving of £180 million.

The Health Professions Council is an independent UK-wide multi-profession regulator which currently regulates fifteen professions including dietitians, educational psychologists, occupational therapists, paramedics and physiotherapists. Regulating social workers will add enormously to its caseload and its title will be altered to reflect its changing role. It will need to beef up its in-house expertise to begin to understand and regulate efficiently the diverse nature of the social work profession.

The CHRE is itself to be removed from the sector and it is proposed that it will become a self-funding body by charging a levy on regulators. Just why professionals should be called upon to pay not only for their own regulation but for a regulator to regulate their regulator, beggars belief. It appears that a wonderful opportunity to remove a superfluous layer of bureaucracy has been lost.

As part of the clear out the Human Fertilisation & Embryology Authority and the Human Tissue Authority are to go. They are to be retained as separate arm’s length bodies for the time being with the aim of transferring their functions by the end of the current parliament. It will be remembered that the last government attempted to merge these bodies but deep seated divisions between them prevented a successful liaison.