(The Professional Committee of The General Medical Council) Successive periods of suspension of a practitioner’s registration.
The doctor, who had previously received a suspended sentence of imprisonment for making false statements in order to enable persons to obtain passports, had been found guilty of serious professional misconduct in having irresponsibly issued prescriptions for methadone to about 70 patients. Upon directing suspension for one year, the committee had intimated the need for a later review, at which the period was extended for a year and the same intimation was given. The doctor’s appeal was brought against the direction made at the second review, which was for extension for one further but final year. The submission of counsel for the GMC, set out at pp 540 and 542, was that the committee must have considered that three years was the proper period of suspension in view of the doctor’s serious misconduct; that its initial direction for suspension could not have been for more than a year; and that it had not been wrong for the two years to be added at the two successive reviews.
Held: The doctor’s appeal succeeded: ‘the only explanation for the committee’s decision … to direct a third such period was that they regarded the original decision to direct suspension instead of erasure as having been too lenient … the direction was wrong in principle.’
Lord Bridge of Harwich said: ‘It can never be a proper ground for the exercise of the power to extend the period of suspension that the period originally directed was insufficient to reflect the gravity of the original offence or offences.’
Judges:
Lord Bridge of Harwich
Citations:
[1990] UKPC 19, [1990] 2 AC 539
Links:
Jurisdiction:
England and Wales
Cited by:
Cited – Khan v General Pharmaceutical Council SC 14-Dec-2016
The pharmacist had been removed from register the for a year after findings of domestic abuse. The court now considered what inquiry was required on an application for a continuation of that suspension.
Held: The different appeals of both the . .
Lists of cited by and citing cases may be incomplete.
Health Professions
Updated: 27 October 2022; Ref: scu.429815