The General Council is designated as the competent authority in the United Kingdom for the purposes of the Directive so far as relating to the medical profession.

The bodies and combinations of bodies F1included in the list maintained under section 4(1) are designated as competent authorities in the United Kingdom for the purposes of awarding primary United Kingdom qualifications.

Subject to subsection (6), the Secretary of State may give directions to the General Council in connection with their functions specified in Schedule 4A, and it shall be the duty of the General Council to comply with any such directions.

Directions given under subsection (5) may be as to matters of administration only.

In Schedule 4AF4—

“the GDPR” means Regulation (EU) 2016/679 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 27 April 2016 on the protection of natural persons with regard to the processing of personal data and on the free movement of such data (General Data Protection Regulation), read with Chapter 2 of Part 2 of the Data Protection Act 2018;

“non-UK medical qualification” means a medical qualification that is awarded to a person by a competent authority of a relevant European State other than the United Kingdom.