General Dental Council v Savery & Ors

The General Dental Council may use and disclose confidential patient records in professional disciplinary proceedings without first obtaining a court order, provided the disclosure is authorised by the statutory scheme and compatible with Article 8. The statutory duties to investigate allegations and refer them between the registrar, Investigating Committee and Practice Committee carry an implied authority to pass on relevant evidential material. Disclosure must remain necessary and proportionate, be confined to those involved in the regulatory process, and be protected by effective confidentiality safeguards. Patient objection or absence of consent does not itself prevent disclosure. Prior notification may be required as an Article 8 safeguard, but the court left that issue tentative.

The General Dental Council sought declarations concerning its use of dental records relating to fourteen patients and former patients of Dr Al-Naher in fitness-to-practise proceedings. The records had been supplied by HSA Simplyhealth Group after the GDC exercised its statutory information-gathering power. The patients had not consented to their further use, and Dr Al-Naher challenged the GDC’s proposed disclosure to its Investigating Committee and, potentially, a Practice Committee.

The central issues were whether section 33B of the Dentists Act 1984 authorised the GDC to obtain the records from HSA, whether the records could be passed through the disciplinary process without court approval, and whether such disclosure complied with confidentiality obligations, data protection law and Article 8.

1. Section 33B. Section 33B(2) permits the GDC to require any person other than the person whose fitness to practise is in question to provide relevant information or documents in that person’s custody or control. Sections 33B(7) and (8) provide enforcement machinery and do not restrict the underlying power. Section 33B(3) concerns statutory prohibitions binding the person required to supply the information, not an alleged impediment to the GDC imposing the requirement.
2. Confidentiality and statutory functions. The registrar and committee members owed common law duties of confidentiality. Those duties permitted disclosure for the necessary investigation of professional misconduct and were reinforced by the statutory duties in sections 27(5)(a), 27A(1), 27A(4)(a) and 27B(1). Those provisions impliedly authorised the transfer of relevant evidential material between the relevant GDC bodies. No prior court order was required.
3. Data protection. The records were sensitive personal data. Their transfer in accordance with the statutory disciplinary functions was capable of justification under Schedules 2 and 3 to the Data Protection Act 1998, read with the Dentists Act 1984 as required by section 3(1) of the Human Rights Act 1998.
4. Article 8. Each non-anonymised onward disclosure interfered with Article 8(1), but the proposed disclosures pursued legitimate aims, had a clear legal basis, and were proportionate. The safeguards included a limited circle of recipients, confidentiality obligations, civil and disciplinary sanctions, data-protection remedies, and care to prevent unnecessary public disclosure. The strong public interest in effective dental regulation outweighed patient confidentiality except in an exceptional case.
5. The court rejected the suggested reading of A Health Authority v X. Properly understood, that decision did not require court approval for disclosure to regulatory bodies for professional misconduct proceedings; its restriction concerned wider, unspecified uses of the records. The court tentatively indicated that reasonable prior notification to patients might in some circumstances be required by Article 8, although the GDC’s notification procedure was sufficient here.
6. The court concluded that no formal order or declaration might be necessary and invited submissions on the appropriate final order.

not stated in the judgment.