Professions

Dentist - professional conduct committee - no breach of convention right to fair hearing before independent and impartial tribunalPreiss v General Dental Council: PC (Lord Bingham of Cornhill, Lord Cooke of Thorndon and Lord Millett): 17 July 2001A patient complained to the General Dental Council about the dental treatment she received from her dentist.The president of the council acted as preliminary screener and later chaired the professional conduct committee hearing.

Some charges were found proved.

The dentist was held to be guilty of serious professional misconduct and suspended from the dentists' register for 12 months.He appealed to the Privy Council on the ground, among other things, that the dual role of the president, and the fact that professional conduct committee members were involved in making the professional and disciplinary rules and policies for the dental profession, failed to guarantee the right to a fair hearing before an independent and impartial tribunal under article 6(1) of the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights.

James Badenoch QC and Dinah Rose (instructed by Le Brasseur J Tickle) for the dentist; Martin Forde (instructed by Capsticks) for the council.Held, allowing the appeal in part, that the requirements of article 6(1) were met by reason of the Privy Council having power to conduct a complete rehearing of the case, including a full reconsideration of the facts and the question whether the facts found amounted to serious professional misconduct; that where the board upheld a finding of serious professional misconduct it could nevertheless, in an appropriate case, replace a suspension by an admonition; and that, accordingly, although the board on its own view of the evidence had found the main charge established warranted the description of serious professional misconduct, albeit other charges did not, it would be neither necessary nor just to suspend the dentist from practice and an admonition would be substituted for the suspension.

(WLR)