25.03.15
GMC gets right of appeal against fitness to practise decisions
The General Medical Council (GMC) is to get a new right of appeal against fitness to practise tribunal decisions it considers “too lenient” and that “do not protect the public”.
The tribunals, run by the Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service (MPTS), which operates independently of the GMC, will now be placed on a statutory footing.
Parliament approved the necessary amendments to the Medical Act 1983 with a ‘Section 60’ order, and the GMC is now consulting on new and amended fitness to practise rules to implement these changes.
Chief executive Niall Dickson called the changes “major reforms in UK professional regulation”.
He said: “They will reinforce our separation from the tribunal service and our role as a patient safety organisation which brings the most serious cases to the tribunal service for adjudication. These changes will also help us streamline our investigations, reduce the time it takes to deal with complaints and make our procedures faster, fairer and more efficient.”
He added that the draft Bill produced for the government by the Law Commissions of the UK would allow GMC to be more responsive and better serve the needs of patients and support improvements in medical practice.
“We hope this change in the law will be introduced as soon as possible after the General Election,” said Dickson.
The amendments also change how complaints about doctors are handled. These include streamlining how cases are prepared and managed to speed up tribunal hearings and make them more effective, introducing legally qualified chairs for some tribunals, and giving power to the tribunals to award costs against the GMC or the doctor if either has not complied with directions and has behaved unreasonably.
The GMC is now carrying out its own consultation on new and amended rules which will be needed to implement changes to the law, approved this month. The consultation will run from Wednesday 25 March to Wednesday 20 May 2015.
The results of the consultation will be published in summer 2015 and then be presented to Parliament for approval.
His Honour David Pearl, chair of the MPTS, said: “The changes we are proposing will strengthen our pre-hearing case management, meaning less time is lost in hearings to legal argument.
“This is the next step in creating a modern and efficient tribunal service for the medical profession, operationally separate from the GMC’s role in investigating complaints.”
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