Health Professions: Complaints
The question
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many complaints there were about to the standard of English of (a) GPs, (b) consultants and (c) other health care professionals in the NHS in each of the last 10 years.
Answered by Stephen Kinnock
No such data is collected. Many of the statutory health regulatory bodies have adopted the use of the International English Language Testing System (IELTS) to assess workers for the health care setting. The overall IELTS English language test score of 7.0 has been set, which is the equivalent of C1 of the Common European Framework for Reference of Languages.
A public authority must also operate a complaints procedure so that if a member of the public feels that a public-facing public authority worker has insufficient proficiency in spoken English for the performance of their role, they can make a formal complaint to the public authority which is then investigated, and a response provided.
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