Clause 28 - Medical practitioners
NHS Reform and Health Care Professions Bill
10:30 am
Mr John Hutton (Minister of State, Department of Health; Barrow and Furness, Labour)
It might be helpful if I explain briefly a group of clauses that are very similar. Clause 28 provides for the transfer of appeals against fitness to practice cases from the Privy Council to the High Court, the Court of Session in Scotland, or the High Court of Justice in Northern Ireland. It also transfers from the High Court to the county court, or its Scottish equivalent, appeals against decisions to remove registration because of fraud or error. Clauses 28 to 32 deal with the important question of appeals. Clause 28 covers medical practitioners and amends the Medical Act 1983, and clauses 29 to 32 deal with the other professions in the same way.
The clauses divert appeals against the decisions of the regulatory bodies about fitness to practise cases away from the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council. A registrant currently has a right of appeal against decisions of regulatory bodies on fitness to practise cases that affect their registration—for example, a decision that someone should be struck off for professional misconduct. The Bill will divert those cases to the High Court.
We have agreed with the devolved Administrations that Scottish cases should go to the Court of Session and Northern Ireland cases should go to the High Court in Northern Ireland. The clauses' purpose is to introduce consistency across the professions. Under current law, some professions appeal to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council while others appeal to the High Court. The clauses' purpose is to redirect appeals from doctors, dentists, opticians, osteopaths and chiropractors. Appeals from nurses, midwives, health visitors and pharmacists are already dealt with by the High Court, which provides a successful model for others to follow. The GMC, for example, has no objection to the changes that we are proposing.
To a large extent, the changes rest on Lord Woolf's report ''Access to Justice'', which was published in 1996. He called for a principle of proportionality to apply to the way in which appeals are handled. We agree with Lord Woolf's opinion that an appeal should go to the lowest court that is competent to hear it. He also recommended that statutory appeals against cases that have only been through one stage of hearing, which are the cases that we are currently dealing with, should go the High Court rather than a higher body.