Another interesting prof reg judgment from the Administrative Court in the form of Towuaghantse v GMC. In this case the Appellant’s acts and omissions from 2013 were found to have contributed to the death of a baby. The registrant was erased by the MPTS who had concluded that there was a risk of repetition due there being the ‘absence of evidence of full remediation’ (paragraph 17).

This judgment (25 March) of Mostyn J. reminds us of the difficulties that panels can fall into at the impairment stage particularly where factual allegations or impairment are denied: 

“If a registrant defends an allegation of primary concrete fact by giving dishonest evidence and by deliberately seeking to mislead…then that forensic conduct would certainly say something about impairment… [if] the registrant does no more than put the GMC to proof then I cannot see how that stance could be held against him in the impairment and sanctions phases. Equally, if the registrant admits the primary facts but defends a proposed evaluation of those facts in the impairment phase then it would be Kafkaesque (to use Walker J’s language) if his defence were used to prove that very proposed evaluation…” (paragraph 72)
The judgment can be found here: https://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/Admin/2021/681.html