High Court partly upholds PSA appeal in PSA v GPhC & Anor 2024

In Professional Standards Authority for Health And Social Care v General Pharmaceutical Council & Anor [2024] EWHC 3005 (Admin) (25 November 2024), the High Court partly upheld an appeal by the PSA against the finding of a GPhC fitness to practise committee.

The Appellant (the PSA) has referred the decision of the Fitness to Practise Committee (“the Committee”) of the First Respondent (“the GPhC”) to impose a stay of the fitness to practise proceedings against the Second Respondent (“R2”).

The Committee found that R2 had a substantive legitimate expectation that no further action would be taken against him in connection with his alleged involvement in a fraudulent scheme for the sale of medication overseas, and the GPhC could not properly resile from this decision. Therefore, the allegations were not capable of being referred under rule 6 of the General Pharmaceutical Council (Fitness to Practise and Disqualification etc. Rules) Order of Council 2010 (“the 2010 Rules”), and the Committee had no statutory power to make a determination.

The Committee also found three serious irregularities in the Council’s handling of the case.

• First, the case should not have been referred under the urgency provision in rule 6(5)(b) of the 2010 Rules as there was no urgency.
• Second, the Council breached rule 11(1) of the 2010 Rules by failing to notify R2 of the referral within the requisite time period of 10 days, and he was only notified six months later.
• Third, R2 was never given reasons, in breach of rule 11(3) of the 2010 Rules, for the direct referral to the Committee, bypassing the Investigating Committee, until the Committee directed disclosure on day 4 of the hearing.

The Authority submitted that the Committee:

i) wrongly directed itself on the erroneous closure of the case by the Council (Ground 1);

ii) wrongly concluded that the allegation was not capable of being referred under rule 6 of the 2010 Rules (Ground 2); and

iii) wrongly applied the test for the imposition of a stay for abuse of process (Ground 3).

In consequence, the Authority submitted that the Committee’s determination was insufficient for the protection of the public, as the allegations that R2’s fitness to practise was impaired were never determined, and the public interest was not properly considered.

The GPhC conceded that the appeal should be allowed, and the decision quashed and remitted for reconsideration.

Mrs Justice Knowles said in her judgement:

“The contents of this judgment stand as a salutary warning to local authorities and to other public bodies concerned with fitness to practise in occupations concerned with or touching on the welfare of children. It is plain that there was a woeful ignorance about the confidential nature of documents produced for the purpose of care proceedings and about how requests for disclosure should be managed. The costs incurred by the GDC and the local authority have been significant and both have been shamed by what occurred. I hope what took place in this case will not happen again.”

In a statement by the GDC, the regulator said:

“The General Dental Council (GDC) acknowledges the recent High Court judgment (The GDC v KK and Others) regarding our application for disclosure of documents from family court proceedings.

This case raised significant concerns about public confidence. We recognise that we made errors in the way that we obtained material between 2019 – 2020 and then used it at subsequent hearings including the fitness to practise hearing in early 2023.

The material was sought in good faith, in line with our statutory purpose to protect the public – but there were significant deficiencies in the way in which we went about this task.

In the judgment of the High Court, it was noted that this was because of genuine error and deficiency of understanding  in relevant teams handling this material, in respect of the nature of family court proceedings, rather than bad faith on behalf of either the GDC – who sought the material – or the local authority who provided it.

Since this error became apparent, we put controls in place to ensure that it is not repeated, and destroyed all documents and data that we were not permitted to have, and launched a programme of training and education for staff. 

“We take our responsibilities regarding the gathering and handling of sensitive information very seriously and have provided unreserved apologies to the Court and the individual concerned in respect of our failings in this case.

“We will continue to embed the measures that we have put in place to ensure that our approach to seeking disclosure of important material is conducted in line with the relevant legislative regimes to ensure that we can effectively protect the public and maintain confidence in the dental profession.” 

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