Regulation of Health and Social Care Professionals Consultation

power to make cost orders. 23
9.30 The use of cost orders, which can be used to enforce case management
directions, is discussed later in this Part.
Provisional view
9.31 Case management can help to ensure an effective and efficient hearing, as well
as securing the right to a hearing within a reasonable time provided for in Article
6(1). However, only some of the regulators currently have powers of case
management. We provisionally propose that the statute should give all the
regulators a broad power to establish rules for case management. The power
could be used, for example, to allow the panels or case managers to give
directions for the conduct of cases and for the consequences of failure to comply
with such directions (such as making an order or the refusal of an application). It
would also allow for standard directions to be issued.
9.32 We welcome views on whether the statute should include a requirement that the
regulators must conduct their fitness to practise proceedings expeditiously. We
think that a better approach would be to provide that the overriding objective of
the Civil Procedure Rules is made part of the regulators’ fitness to practise
procedures. This objective provides that courts must deal with cases justly, which
includes amongst other matters ensuring that cases are dealt with expeditiously
and fairly and in ways which are proportionate to for example the costs and
complexity of the case. 24 The overriding objective has already been incorporated
in various forms in almost all court rules.
Provisional Proposal 9-4: The statute should give all the regulators a broad
power to establish rules for case management.
Provisional Proposal 9-5: The statute should provide that the overriding
objective of the Civil Procedure Rules – that cases must be dealt with justly –
is made part of the regulators’ fitness to practise procedures.
COMPOSITION OF PANELS
9.33 All of the regulators are required to constitute and make rules governing the size
and membership of Fitness to Practise Panels. At some regulators Panel
appointments are undertaken by a separate appointments committee. Although
these committees are appointed by the regulator, they often cannot include a
Council member, member of a Committee or a Council employee. 25 Other
regulators have entered into arrangements with the Appointments Commission to
23 General Medical Council, Reform of the Fitness to Practise Procedures at the GMC: The
Future of Adjudication and the Establishment of the Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service:
A Paper For Consultation (2011) paras 79 to 91.
24 Civil Procedure Rules, rr 1.1 and 1.2.
25 See, for example, General Pharmaceutical Council (Statutory Committees and their
Advisers Rules) Order of Council 2010, SI 2010 No 1616.
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