Editorial January 2005
(unjustly suspended doctors)

A new year, a new Editor and, with the coming into force of the Freedom of Information Act, the dawning of a new era of openness.

In the late ‘90s I chanced upon a small paragraph in The Observer about Dr Tomlin's historic campaign for unjustly suspended doctors, which has eventually borne rich fruits of success. The Society was until then unknown to me, as to many psychiatrists of that time.

That news item rang bells of experience (I had been twice suspended from the Mental Health Review Tribunal) so I joined the Suspended Doctors Group for a time, even though its focus was almost exclusively upon the vicissitudes of wronged NHS doctors.

So I had to pursue a more lonely quest, which has recently been pejoratively characterised by the DCA (Department of Constitutional Affairs) as a “crusade”, one to unravel the secretive workings of the country's many tribunals and the hazards faced by doctors who serve them. I have been indebted to the Society for the support of the SCP's Executive Committee, its Chairman and my predecessor as Editor who had provided exposure of my findings in the Journal of Clinical and Social Psychiatry and the Points of View section of the Society's new website.

My focus was to press for the establishment of proper complaints procedures to protect all tribunal doctors, and to seek for myself access to the undisclosed ‘evidence' based upon which I had been severely punished for no crime.

More than ten years ago, in 1994, I had proposed the inauguration of a complaints procedure for MHRT members which would carry safeguards including the following:

a) informal contact at the earliest opportunity (ideally by telephone) to alert the member to any complaint, with the hope and expectation that by prompt discussion problems could normally be resolved informally and quickly;

b) the right for a member to know without delay the origin and full particulars of any serious complaint

c) the nature and source of any opinions expressed or recorded by way of “monitoring"; and

d) open evidence as to any peripheral considerations relating to the investigation of any complaint;

e) all those steps to precede any covert or declared "suspension".

Should a formal hearing arising from a complaint remain necessary:

f) this should be open and allow representation; if the complaint be upheld, there should be

g) provision for an appeal to an

h) independent panel; should the complaint be unsubstantiated, there should be

i) a right to redress and

j) provision for compensation.

In 1997, not long before suspending me again, the regional chairman of the day reminded me tartly that had he chosen not to appoint me to any further tribunal hearings after the 1994 complaint, I would have been left with no redress. As to my suggestion of a complaints procedure “you must now take whatever action you consider to be appropriate”.

A “watered down” complaints procedure for the MHRT was eventually inaugurated in 2000, without taking up this Society's offer to comment upon it in draft. The final terms specifically excluded retrospective reviews and, until the end of 2004, the LDC & its successor the DCA - and their two Lords Chancellor - resolutely maintained their discretionary rights to secrecy, despite the current holder of that office having stated unequivocally that exemptions under the new Act should only be relied upon very rarely and in wholly exceptional circumstances:

Lord Falconer of Thoroton , QC , said he expected that ministerial veto would be used only rarely to stop papers being released under the Freedom of Information Act, which comes into force today - - The Lord Chancellor insisted that it would be used only under exceptional circumstances. He said: “That ministerial veto will be very rarely used.- - " The Times , January 1 2005

A few days on, Magnus Linklater took a more sanguine view of the new openness:
- anyone applying for information must be prepared for long waits, uncompromising bureaucracy, setbacks and frustration along the way. A plethora of reasons will be offered for withholding documents - - Those who persevere may have to appeal to the Information Commissioner if they are turned down, and then go through another long process. - The Times , January 6 2005

SCPNET will keep a watching brief upon developments and would welcome readers' experiences of the FOI.

Until the early 1990s the Bulletin of the Royal College of Psychiatry would have been the place to keep psychiatrists aware of important matters affecting their professional lives; now the gap left by the College's preoccupation with education and evidence-based scientific psychiatry has to be filled by Hospital Doctor and the SCP.

In its January 2005 Editorial, the BJP celebrates its enviable scholarly expertise combined with accessibility, and wishes readers a happy and scientifically stimulating New Year. SCPNET carries important new reports by the Society's Chairman and from the Suspended Doctors Group; hopes that its readers will have more satisfying and fulfilling professional lives, that SCP's membership will grow, and that Points of View will share many more contributions about life in psychiatry during 2005.

P Grahame Woolf