Special report from the Select Committee on the Medical Act (1858) Amendment (No. 3) Bill [Lords] : together with the proceedings of the Committee, minutes of evidence, and appendix.

  • Great Britain. Parliament. House of Commons. Select Committee on the Medical Act (1858) Amendment (No. 3) Bill.
Date:
1879
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Special report from the Select Committee on the Medical Act (1858) Amendment (No. 3) Bill [Lords] : together with the proceedings of the Committee, minutes of evidence, and appendix. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by Royal College of Physicians, London. The original may be consulted at Royal College of Physicians, London.

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    g Appendix, No. I. Extract from Thirteenth Report, dated 31st March 1871, of the then Medical Officer of the Privt Council, Mr. Simon. Constitution of the Medical Profession. In my last report I described in detail certain communications which this department had had with the General Council of Medical Registration and Education on the subject of the working of the Medical Actof 1858, and stated the determination to which yourLordships, at the date when I was reporting, had come, to propose to Parliament a Bill for the radical amendment of the Medical Act. Proceedings connected with this purpose formed in 1870 a large share of the work of the department. On the 8th of April the Lord President introduced in the House of Lords a Bill to provide for the object in view; and on the 7th July this Bill, somewhat modified, but with no essential change, as the result of its discussion in the House of Lords, had its first reading in the House of Commons. Here, unfortunately, there was such pressure of other public business that the Bill could not till long afterwards be brought under consideration ; and when at last its turn for consideration had arrived, the end of the Session was so close that no measure requiring much discus- sion could be considered. In this state of the case claims were put forward for the intro- duction of a new and very controversial subject-matter into the Bill; and as the promoters of these claims (which related to the constitution of the General Medical Council) would not consent to postpone them for consideration to the present Session of Parliament, the Minister in charge of the Bill was of course obliged to withdraw it. I subjoin, as Appendix No. 3, the following papers :—(a) a departmental memorandum, written at the time in explanation of the Lord President’s Bill, and now supplemented-by a note on each of the two chief questions which were discussed while the Bill was in pro- gress ; and (b) a tabular statement as to the constituencies whicli are at present represented by delegates in the Medical Council. Appendix, No. 3. PAPERS RELATING TO THE MEDICAL PROFESSION. a.—Departmental Memorandum on the Lord President’s Medical Acts Amendment Bill of 1870. The Bill has two main objects* :—one, that the many Authorities which at present confer license for professional practice shall for the future only confer such license by acting con- jointly with one another, in their respective divisions of the United Kingdom, under co-ordination by the General Medical Council; and the other, that in future there shall not be given any license for professional practice which does not imply (to the required minimum amount) qualifications both for Medicine and for Surgery. It is intended that the existing Authorities should have every proper opportunity to effect the required consolidation by voluntary arrangements with one another; which arrangements notoriously may have to be different in the different divisions of the United Kingdom. As, however, differences of opinion or conflicting interests among the Authorities may absolutely require arbitration, and as each divisional arrangement will in great part be of common public concern, and may even in certain cases require to be explained and justified in Parliament, the Bill proposes—first, that the constitution of each of the new Boards shall be subject to the approval of the General Council, and, secondly, that both these divisional constitutions, and also the regulations which the General Council will have to establish for their common working, shall be subject to the approval of Her Majesty’s Government. As regards the question what privileges and titles shall be conferribie by the new Boards, and under w'hat sort of limitation, the Bill distinguishes between that least degree ofqualifi- cation which shall give admission to the Medical Register, and, on the other hand, those higher titles of professional honour which various of the licensing bodies have in their award. As regards the latter, the Bill does not propose to interfere in any way whatever with the discretion of the individual Authorities, except (if indeed this can be called an exception) that the higher titles will be awardable only to persons already members of the Profession;+ but, with the aim of exciting a more general ambition for the attainment of the higher titles, the Bill proposes that, for each future practitioner, the General Council shall have power to state such higher titles in a separate column of the register, as distinct from the practi- tioner’s minimum qualification. With regard to the minimum qualification itself, the principle of the Bill is that each of the new Boards must be deemed to represent, for the division of the United Kingdom in which it acts, all separate licensing Boards which have hitherto [.See Observation i., p. 326.] t [.See Observation ii., p. 326.]
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