Professions

Medical practitioner - complaints procedure - disclosure of informationR v The General Medical Council ex parte Toth: QBD (Lightman J): 23 June 2000

The applicant made a complaint in 1997 to the General Medical Council accusing a doctor of serious professional misconduct.

The screener, who acted as a filter in the complaints procedure, twice rejected the complaint.

The applicant applied for judicial review of the decisions refusing to allow the complaint to proceed.Timothy Straker QC and Clive Rawlings (instructed by Russell-Cooke Potter & Chapman) for the applicant; Mark Shaw (instructed by Field Fisher Waterhouse) for the respondent; Mary O'Rourke (instructed by Christina Freedman, London, the Solicitor for the Medical Defence Union) for the interested party.Held, quashing the decisions and remitting them for rehearing, that it was important that justice should be seen to be done and that in the light of the Human Rights Act 1998 the GMC procedures must be transparent; that complainants had a legitimate interest in their complaints proceeding to a public hearing; that the role of the screener was a narrow one and that the normal course of a complaint was for it to proceed to the Preliminary Proceedings Committee; and that the GMC's change of policy in favour of disclosing documents to the complainant did not prevent it insisting on an undertaking of confidentiality from a complainant.