Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what steps he is taking to ensure that the Nursing and Midwifery Council prevents nurses who do not have requisite skills in speaking, listening to, reading and writing English from being employed in the NHS.

The Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) is the independent regulator of nurses and midwives in the United Kingdom and is responsible for operational matters concerning the discharge of its statutory duties, including registration of nurses.

However, this Government is firmly committed to improving public protection by ensuring that only healthcare professionals who have a sufficient knowledge of the English language are able to work in the UK. Accordingly, we are currently consulting the public on amending legislation to enable the NMC to apply language controls, where appropriate, for nursing and midwifery applicants from within the European Economic Area (EEA). This consultation will end on the 15 December 2014.

The NMC already requires overseas (non-EEA) applicants to complete the academic version of the International English Language Testing System achieving level 7.0 across all four aspects of listening, reading, writing and speaking.