Attorney General and the Meadow Appeal
The Government’s Senior Law Officer is to join forces with the General Medical Council in a bid to overturn a High Court ruling that extends expert witness immunity to disciplinary action by professional bodies.
In February, Mr Justice Collins ruled that the GMC were wrong to find Professor Sir Roy Meadow guilty of serious professional misconduct and strike him off the medical register because he had acted in good faith. It had been argued at an earlier Fitness To Practice tribunal that Professor Meadow had given flawed expert evidence at the trial of Cheshire solicitor Sally Clark.
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Granting the appeal, Mr Justice Collins went further, ruling that public policy “requires that witnesses should not be deterred from giving evidence by the fear of litigation at the suit of those who may feel that the evidence has damaged them unjustifiably.”
Acknowledging that the principle would evolve, he outlined a test to be applied to poor quality expert evidence. In his words, it is for the Trial Judge to refer an expert witness to his or her professional body when “satisfied that the expert’s conduct had fallen so far below what is expected of him as to merit some disciplinary action.” He added that “whether there is a breach of the expert's professional rules and if so what sanction is appropriate would be a matter for the body concerned.”
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Now, in a surprise move, the Attorney General has announced that he is to seek permission to support the GMC’s appeal against the Collins principle.
Speaking on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, Lord Goldsmith said the High Court was wrong in principle
“to say the person who decides whether or not somebody has broken their own professional code is the judge.”
The public, he said, deserves a degree of protection from people who go to extremes and go beyond their field of expertise, or give views which are not properly supported.
The Attorney General added that, “as experts are performing a very important and influential role, the public wants to have confidence that experts are performing to proper professional standards.”
He finished by saying that he did not want to deter experts from coming forward but said that it should be enough that professional bodies themselves have measures in place to safeguard members from frivolous or vexatious claims.
Lord Goldsmith has denied bowing to public demands for action in the face of what critics of expert witnesses say is a ruling that gives professionals blanket immunity when giving evidence in Court.
The GMC’s appeal is due to be heard in July.