Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if she will introduce a statutory register for (a) clinical technologists and (b) other health professionals that use a voluntary register.

Clinical Technologists are not regulated by law and the Government has no current plans to extend statutory regulation to the profession. The statutory regulation of healthcare professionals should only be used where the risks to public and patient protection cannot be addressed in other ways, such as through employer oversight or accredited voluntary registration.

The Government keeps the professions subject to statutory regulation under review and published a consultation, Healthcare regulation: deciding when statutory regulation is appropriate. The consultation ran from 6 January to 31 March 2022 and sought views on the criteria that should be used to determine when statutory regulation of a healthcare profession is appropriate. The Government will publish its response in due course.

The Department has not held any recent discussions with the Health and Care Professions Council on the registration of Clinical Technologists. The Professional Standards Authority (PSA) for health and social care’s Accredited Registers Programme independently assesses organisations who register practitioners who are not regulated by law. Healthcare scientists concerned with the practical application of physics, engineering, and technology are able to apply to join the register of Clinical Technologists, which is accredited by the PSA.