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Health and Sport Committee 11 February 2016

11 Feb 2016 · S4 · Health and Sport Committee

Item of business

Subordinate Legislation

Public Services Reform (Scotland) Act 2010 (Commencement No 7) Order 2016 (SSI 2016/22)

Brett Collins Watch on SPTV

Ultimately, there is an anomaly in the proposed legislation, and it sits within the non-surgical cosmetic procedures. That anomaly exists because that is an industry sector that includes a wide spectrum of people who provide services in Scotland and the rest of the UK. In that landscape you will find everyone from doctors, nurses and surgeons to beauticians and completely untrained individuals providing treatments. Fundamentally, therefore, within the current proposed regulation and the method for regulation, there are some significant flaws and contradictions. Although I take on board what Robbie Pearson said about a learning process in 2016-17, you do not need a crystal ball to predict a lot of the challenges that we will face because of the manner in which the proposals are to be implemented. As well, we have a number of concerns in that, ultimately, as our submission says, the Department of Health says that “any regulated activity or treatment must meet the following criteria: there is fair playing ... the requirement to register must be based on risk to people who use services and the extent to which statutory system regulation of providers can mitigate that risk ... all types of provider must meet the same requirements.” Fundamentally, the suggestion that all providers “must meet the same requirements” must be one of the biggest flaws because, specifically for non-surgical cosmetic treatment, the proposals do not get anywhere near to holding all providers to meeting the same requirements, because they do not include all providers. For that to be achieved, all providers should be accountable to the same body and to the same standards of regulation. Ultimately, the proposals fail to achieve that. Surely, for any form of regulation to be successful, it must define who is suitable to provide the treatments. In its response to being asked whether regulation should be based on whether an independent clinic provides the service rather than on specific procedures or cosmetic treatments, HIS said that, because of the fact that treatments and methods of delivery change, the regulation could quickly go out of date if it were based on procedures and treatments. Ultimately, what causes risk to the public are the procedures and treatments; they are what cause damage to health and appearance. If you are not going to look specifically at the procedures and treatments—the cause of the risk—because you feel that, ultimately, you would not be able to safeguard the public’s safety, how on earth will regulation safeguard public safety? When I read the response from HIS, I thought that it was saying that regulation of the industry cannot be done. It can. Certain interpretations could be changed and what treatments broadly do in terms of injecting skin, skin healing and so on could be examined in a different way. To me, the catalyst has been non-surgical treatments. In the report that was published, non-surgical treatments are referenced consistently, but we are told that the proposals are not supposed to regulate non-surgical cosmetic treatments. That does not seem to make sense. Nurses, doctors and dental professionals are singled out and some medical professionals—for example, prescribing pharmacists—are excluded, as are non-healthcare professionals, including beauty therapists. I know that a phased approach is being taken, but the phased approach does not incorporate everyone in the same regulation. Eventually, there might be a licensing scheme run by several authorities: in London, where borough councils have licensing schemes, the situation is not consistent across the board. The idea is to enhance public safety and lower the risk. Therefore, decisions must be made about whether procedures are medical procedures that need to be provided by medically trained individuals, whether they need to be provided in an medical environment and whether they need to be regulated by a medically led regulator. If the answer to those questions is yes, the Government needs to state who can provide the treatments. If it is no, we do not need the presence of a state-run, medically led regulator to deal with non-surgical treatments. I would like to make one final point—

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Health and Sport Committee 11 February 2016

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