ABSTRACT
The Birth Project Group's online survey generated findings with important implications for the midwives' statutory regulator, the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC). This chapter analyses these implications, reading the survey data alongside one of the NMC's recent publications on ethical conduct in order to demonstrate the questionable relevance of the NMC, as constructed, to midwifery practice. The United Kingdom Central Council was just one of a multitude of regulatory bodies spanning the four countries of the UK and it was replaced by the NMC in 2002. Standard setting inevitably requires the establishment of priorities and the NMC does this in the form of a response to the scathing criticisms of practitioners' pathological disengagement in the Francis report. The need for the practitioner to be candid in raising concerns and escalating them is emphasised in 'The Code' as 'the duty of candour'. 'The Code' may be regarded as an example of Mary Chiarella's 'floors and ceilings' approach to standard setting.
