Details of Provisions
Reservation
This reserves the regulation of the health professions. This includes professional qualifications, eligibility to practice and control over standards of professional competence and conduct. This does not reserve matters such as the pay and conditions of service of the health professions within the National Health Service in Scotland or their deployment and management.
Health professions are defined for the purposes of this reservation in the interpretation paragraph as meaning the professions regulated by various enactments. The professions regulated by the specified enactments include doctors, dentists, dental auxiliaries, opticians, pharmacists, nurses, midwives, health visitors, chiropodists, dieticians, physiotherapists, medical laboratory scientific officers, orthoptists, prosthetists and orthotists, arts therapists, occupational therapists, radiographers, osteopaths, chiropractors and veterinary surgeons.
Exceptions
There is excepted from the reservation, the subject matter of:
section 21 of the National Health Service (Scotland) Act 1978. This enables the Scottish Parliament to legislate about the matter of what vocational training and experience is required to be possessed by doctors before they can provide general medical services in the NHS. This is a matter which is regulated by section 21 This exception is in line with the overall devolution of Health Service matters; and
section 25 of that Act. Similarly, this section gives the Scottish Parliament legislative competence to regulate the provision of general dental services for the NHS so far as that relates to vocational training and disciplinary proceedings. This is part of the subject-matter of section 25.