Dad v The General Dental Council

In interpreting a professional restoration application form, the court must consider the form’s wording, context and purpose. Statutory rules of interpretation provide only an analogy. The relevant question is whether the information was clearly relevant to the regulatory decision, assessed fact-sensitively and objectively. Applicants must give the regulator the information needed to assess fitness to practise and, where genuinely in doubt, should ask and err on the side of disclosure. A tribunal may properly refuse a no-case submission where the duty to disclose depends on the full factual context. The appeal was dismissed because the investigation was plainly relevant to restoration and the Professional Conduct Committee’s procedural shortcomings did not cause serious injustice.

Mr Dad appealed under section 29(1)(b) of the Dentists Act 1984 against a Professional Conduct Committee decision ordering his erasure from the Dentists’ Register and immediate suspension.

The proceedings concerned his failure to disclose, in a restoration application, an ongoing investigation by NHS National Services Scotland Counter Fraud Services. The Committee rejected a no-case submission, finding that the investigation fell within the information required by the application form. It later found the failure misleading and dishonest, amounting to misconduct and impairment of fitness to practise.

The central issues were whether the form imposed an objective duty to disclose the investigation, whether the Committee should have terminated the proceedings at the no-case stage, and whether its reasons disclosed serious procedural irregularity causing injustice.

1. Appeal dismissed. The Professional Conduct Committee’s decision was neither wrong nor unjust because of serious procedural irregularity.
2. The duty to disclose had to be determined from the application form read in its transactional and regulatory context. The form was not legislation. The constitutional principles and refined rules applicable to statutory interpretation therefore applied only by analogy. Pinner v Everett [1969] 1 WLR 1266 did not require a forensic or exclusively literal approach.
3. Both the GDC’s purpose in obtaining information relevant to fitness to practise and fairness to applicants were legitimate interpretive aids. The form was directed to eliciting relevant material, not to creating a closed list which excluded analogous information. The asymmetry between the substantial risks of under-disclosure and the relatively minor risks of over-disclosure supported an approach of declaring relevant information and asking the GDC where genuine doubt existed.
4. The duty was objective and fact-sensitive. Relevant considerations included the gravity of the investigation, its connection with the applicant’s professional conduct and regulatory history, and its relevance to the restoration decision. An applicant’s subjective belief or evasive intention could not create the duty, but could confirm that relevance had been recognised.
5. On the facts, the NSS CFS investigation was a criminal investigation concerning the administration of a dental practice by an applicant whose previous removal and erasure were connected with fraud investigations and non-disclosure. It was centrally relevant to restoration and had to be declared, whether viewed as falling within question 1, question 2, or the wider declaration.
6. A no-case procedure under paragraph 19(3) of the General Dental Council (Fitness to Practise) Rules Order in Council 2006 is borrowed from criminal procedure, but the analogy is limited. In regulatory proceedings the tribunal’s decision-making is undivided and may require an overview of the whole case and its fact-sensitive issues. R (oao Husband) v GDC [2019] EWHC 2210 (Admin) provided guidance but did not require the Committee to decide the interpretive issue in the appellant’s favour at the close of the regulator’s case.
7. The Committee’s reasons were brief and imperfectly expressed, particularly its parsing of “regulatory or licensing body”. Nevertheless, they made clear that disclosure was required because the investigation was squarely relevant to restoration and the GDC would want to know about it. Any deficiency in reasoning was not serious enough to cause injustice.

• High Court (Queen’s Bench Division): statutory appeal from the Professional Conduct Committee of the General Dental Council. Appeal dismissed.