Biswas v General Medical Council

On an appeal from a professional disciplinary determination, the court may uphold findings of fact where the tribunal was entitled to prefer one account over another and there was sufficient evidence to support its conclusion. An alleged linguistic ambiguity does not establish an error of law where the tribunal’s conclusion is independently supported by the evidence as a whole. A finding that a medical practitioner deliberately gave a false account to protect his position and discredit a complainant may properly support findings of inappropriate conduct, abuse of professional position and serious professional misconduct.

Dr Umapati Biswas appealed under section 40(1) of the Medical Act 1983 against the Professional Conduct Committee’s determination that he was guilty of serious professional misconduct and that his name should be erased from the Medical Register.

The charges concerned complaints by three patients. The appeal proceeded principally on the allegations concerning Mrs FG, including advice about travelling with her ill baby and a later report to the German Embassy alleging neglect and dehydration. The central issues were whether the Committee had properly resolved the conflicting evidence and whether the alleged translation and tense of a German word and verb caused an error of law.

1. Appeal dismissed. The court upheld the Professional Conduct Committee’s findings concerning Mrs FG. The claimant accepted that, if those findings were proper, the appeal failed irrespective of the complaints involving the other patients.
2. The Committee was entitled to accept Mrs FG’s clear and consistent account that the claimant had not expressed concern about her flying to Hamburg with the child. Her account was consistent with the clinical note and the claimant’s recorded assessment. The Committee had abundant material on which to reach that conclusion and had not erred in law by preferring her evidence.
3. The Committee was also entitled to accept Herr Schenk’s evidence about the claimant’s telephone report to the German Embassy, corroborated by the contemporaneous fax. It could find that the claimant was describing the child’s condition on 1 January 2001, rather than later concerns arising from the complaint.
4. The case did not turn on the precise meaning of the German word verwahrlost or the tense of the accompanying verb. The Committee was entitled to find that the claimant had given a deliberately false account of the child’s condition and had acted to protect his own position against a legitimate complaint.
5. Those findings were open to the Committee on the evidence. The court detected no error of law. The claimant did not pursue argument on serious professional misconduct or penalty, and the court therefore dismissed the appeal without determining the allegations concerning the other two patients.

• Professional Conduct Committee of the General Medical Council: on 12 May 2003 found the claimant guilty of serious professional misconduct and directed that his name be erased from the Medical Register.
• High Court (Administrative Court): dismissed the statutory appeal and upheld the Committee’s material findings.