The government must "urgently" implement plans to test continental European pharmacists on their English language skills or risk continuing to expose patients to harm, pharmacists and the General Pharmaceutical Council (GPhC) have warned.

An amendment to EU law, passed by the European parliament in October, will allow regulators to test the language skills of all healthcare professionals including pharmacists before they register in the UK from 2015, the GPhC said last week (November 26).

Any delay in implementing the rules could "expose patients to continuing risk of harm", the regulator warned, in its response to a General Medical Council (GMC) consultation on how the new rules could be applied to doctors.

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	"We look forward to working with Department of Health (DH) colleagues on how the new language provisions can be implemented," said GPhC registration and international policy manager Martha Pawluczyk.

Currently, EU pharmacists can automatically register in any country in the union and language tests can only be conducted by a pharmacists' employer. This can pose a threat to patient safety because of the variation in how different companies test their employees, Pharmacy Voice said in its own response to the consultation last week (November 29).

Pharmacy Voice called on the DH to "work urgently" with the GPhC and other stakeholders to find a way to apply the rules in the UK.

"We wish to see these provisions transposed into national legislation at the earliest opportunity. Such testing must be proportionate to the skills required for a pharmacist to practise," Pharmacy Voice said.

Aniruddh Patel, owner of Savages Pharmacy in Burnham-on-Crouch, Essex, said English tests should be mandatory for European pharmacists.

"They have to be at a high standard because they're not ordering a Big Mac, it's really serious things. If you misinterpret the information, you could kill somebody," he told C+D.

The DH had commissioned a review of the regulation of language skills and would work with the GPhC to implement any changes "as soon as possible", it told C+D today (December 5).

In 2012, a House of Commons health select committee recommended the government allow the GMC to test the language skills of doctors coming from the EU. In February this year, the GPhC called for similar tests to be carried out on pharmacists.

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