Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask His Majesty's Government, further to the Written Answer by Baroness Merron on 20 July (HL1965), what checks or actions they have taken to ensure that employers, system regulators and professionals are ensuring that physician assistants are not illegally acting as prescribers.

If any concerns are raised that a registered physician assistant is illegally prescribing, those concerns should be referred to the General Medical Council for investigation, in the same way as any other potential breach of professional standards.

More broadly, National Health Service employers have a legal responsibility for ensuring that the staff they employ are properly trained and competent to undertake only those responsibilities specified in agreed job descriptions, and for managing medicines in line with Care Quality Commission regulations.