Top Secret, the GDC Review of Top Up Cases
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- Published: Wednesday, 21 August 2024 09:05
- Written by Tony Jacobs
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The handling of a recent Freedom of Information (FOI) request has shown the GDC demonstrating their love hate relationship with the concepts of trust and transparency. That the FOI was related to an area where the GDC‘s performance has been recognised as particularly poor, underlines the gulf between what they say and what they do.
GDPUK readers will remember the Williams top up case and erasure which was subsequently overturned in a damming judgement against the GDC. Despite rejection of their repeated requests for backing from a number of other bodies, the GDC pressed on alone and sought to appeal the High Court decision. They lost.
With their own regulator, the ineffectual Professional Standards Authority unhappy about the GDC’s Fitness to Practice process, the Council offered to conduct a review of 124 cases that had involved top up fees. Both the announcement of the review, and its completion were done in near secrecy. After some prodding an unattributed four paragraph news item appeared on the GDC website in April 2024. It said: “We have carried out a review of 124 cases involving ‘top-up fees’ since the Contract Regulations came into force. Having reviewed all the circumstances of the relevant cases and engaged the services of independent legal counsel, no further action was required, as it was established that the outcomes in these cases did not depend on the interpretation of the Contract Regulations which was at issue in the Williams case.”
Given the lack of information from the GDC, dentist Dominic O’Hooley sought some further detail with his FOI request.”
He asked for :
1 The name of the independent legal counsel who did the 124 case review.
2 The review documentation (suitably redacted)
3 The cost of the review
4 GDC senior team communications regarding the review once received (redacted as appropriate)
The GDC failed to respond in the time set out by the Freedom of Information Act. A month late, and after being chased up by Mr O’Hooley, they finally replied.
In answer to 1, the GDC wrote: “The 124 case review was conducted internally, not by external counsel.” This goes against the news item published by the GDC in April 2023, perhaps explaining their volunteering a further snippet: “Outside the scope of your request, we can confirm that whilst carrying out the review of the 124 cases involving ‘top up fees’ there was one case identified that external counsel was instructed to complete a separate, detailed review.”
The response to 2 was a blank refusal: “We can confirm that we hold copies of review documentation within scope of your request, however we consider that we are unable to provide you with this information as this is exempt from disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act.”
GDPUK has noted before that the GDC’s accounting systems are conveniently uninformative, and their reply to the third question fell back upon this reason: “We do not hold any recorded information on the cost of the 124 case review. This is because the review was conducted internally by staff, and we did not record the cost of their time.” The cost of the external counsel appears to have been forgotten.
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