Copied below is the text of the letter that Roger Spiller, Head of Health, has sent to the Secretary of State for Health concerning the proposals, in the consultation document for the Health Professions Council, to significantly increase the level of the fee for practitioners to register
"I am writing to draw to your attention that we have been flooded with protests from members regarding the proposal in the Health Professions Council Consultation document to set a fee level of between £65 and £85 per annum for registration, and approximately £200 for overseas applications. The present registration fee is just £22.
The professions covered by the HPC include: arts therapists, chiropodists/podiatrists, clinical scientists, dieticians, medical laboratory scientific officers, occupational therapists, orthoptists, paramedics, physiotherapists, prosthetists and orthotists, radiographers and speech and language therapists. Others will be expected to be covered at a later date.
Many of these staff are part time and some low paid. Further the process of skill mix could place individual staff in the cover of more than one regulatory body with the prospect of paying multiple fees.
Amicus MSF is committed to the rationale for the Health Professions Council but do not understand why practitioners have to pay for its newly expanded role. The fee should be set merely for administration relating to entering onto and maintenance of the register. In addition, the budgetary assumptions underlying this proposed hike of between 200 and 300% is not open to critical examination. You may be aware that former Chairman of the General Teaching Council described the budget set on the formation of that body as "a joke".
You may also be aware that when there was a requirement that the GTC be funded by teachers themselves via a registration fee, the teaching unions raised this matter with the STRB and, after deliberation, the Review Body added a sum equivalent to the registration fee to the basic uplift. This amount has now been consolidated into the basic rate and will be revalorised automatically in line with STRB recommendations. We will be making proposals to the Pay Review Bodies and Whitley Councils for similar arrangements for our members.
We hope that if successful this will head off growing support amongst members for a boycott of paying the registration fee which, in our view, would launch the new HPC in a very unfortunate light. In the meantime a positive response from the Department could dampen the opposition."
Future dates of the HPC Roadshow are:
| Tue 27th Aug |
Inverness |
Thistle Inverness |
| Thu 29th Aug |
Edinburgh |
Balmoral Hotel |
| Tue 3rd Sept |
Norwich |
Norwich City Football Club |
| Wed 4th Sept |
Boston |
Blackfriars Arts Centre |
| Tue 10th Sept |
Brighton |
Hilton Brighton Metropole Hotel |
| Thu 12th Sept |
Liverpool |
Thistle Liverpool |
| Tue 17th Sept |
Carlisle |
Swallow Hilltop Hotel |
| Thu 19th Sept |
Glasgow |
Thistle |
| Tue 24th Sept |
Central London |
Thistle Hyde Park |
Further details of which are available at www.hpcuk.org