Regulation of Health and Social Care Professionals Consultation

General Dental Council. The test applied at the Health Professions Council has
the advantage of clarity and is focused clearly on the primary duty of public
protection. However, there may be concerns that it may restrict unnecessarily the
discretion of Panels. We welcome further evidence on this point. On balance, we
propose that Panels should be able to admit evidence which would not be
admissible in court proceedings if the admission of such evidence is fair and
relevant to the case.
Provisional Proposal 9-11: The statute should apply the civil rules of evidence
to fitness to practise hearings. The relevant rules should be those that apply
in the part of the UK in which a hearing takes place.
Provisional Proposal 9-12: Fitness to Practise Panels should be able to admit
evidence which would not be admissible in court proceedings if the admission
of such evidence is fair and relevant to the case.
Standard of proof
9.65 In our view, our scheme should retain the civil standard of proof in fitness to
practise hearings. This is already required by virtue of section 60A of the Health
Act 1999 although it is not always specified in the relevant legislation. In our view,
there are strong public protection arguments for adopting the civil standard. The
criminal standards implies that someone who is more likely than not to be a
danger to the public should be allowed to continue practising, just so long as the
panel is not sure that he or she is a danger to the public. It seems to us that
professional regulation is quite different from the criminal context, where the state
is required to make sure that someone has committed a crime before taking the
extreme and punitive step of imprisoning him or her. Public protection is, of
course, an element in criminal justice, but primarily at the sentencing stage, not in
terms of findings of guilt.
Provisional Proposal 9-13: The statute should require the civil standard of
proof in fitness to practise hearings.
Hearings in public
9.66 In our view the statute should establish a clear position across the regulators on
whether hearings are held in public or in private. This is an important matter and
in our view the interests of the public and professionals are best served by having
clear and consistent criteria. At most of the regulators the default position is that
hearings should be in public. But there are various exceptions to this position
which vary between the regulators.
9.67 We provisionally propose that the fitness to practise rules should be brought into
line with the Civil Procedure Rules on this matter. In effect, there would be a
general rule that a hearing is to be in public unless one or more of the specified
exceptions apply. Of those exceptions, the following would be most relevant to
fitness to practise hearings:
(1) publicity would defeat the object of the hearing;
(2) it involves confidential information and publicity would damage that
confidentiality;
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