LMN v Health and Care Professions Council

On an application under article 31(12) of the Health and Care Professions Order 2001, the court must decide whether an interim suspension order was wrong, including whether it was necessary and proportionate for public protection or in the public interest. The court is not confined to a judicial-review approach, although it must respect the specialist tribunal’s expertise. Serious, sustained findings of dishonesty, manipulation and breach of court orders in a practitioner’s private life may establish a real professional risk even without criticism of clinical practice. Public-interest suspension is subject to a high and relatively rarely met threshold. The court may ask whether a reasonable member of the public would be significantly troubled or shocked by the practitioner remaining in practice. Defects in a committee’s reasoning do not require relief if the ultimate order remains necessary and proportionate.

The applicant, a registered Practitioner Psychologist, applied under article 31(12)(a) of the Health and Care Professions Order 2001 to terminate a 16-month interim suspension order imposed by the Health and Care Professions Council’s Investigations Committee. The referral arose from findings in private Family Court proceedings concerning the applicant’s conduct in her family life, together with alleged failures to comply with court orders, report adverse findings and make a police report accurately. There was no complaint about her clinical skill, judgment or interactions with patients.

The applicant challenged the Committee’s characterisation of the evidence, its findings on public protection and public confidence, its proportionality assessment, and its conclusion that interim conditions of practice were unworkable. The central issue was whether the Committee’s decision was wrong under article 31(2).

1. Application refused. Under article 31(12) of the Health and Care Professions Order 2001, the court held that the Committee was not wrong to impose an interim suspension order and that the order was necessary and proportionate both for public protection and in the public interest.
2. The court had to decide whether the Committee was wrong, rather than apply only a judicial-review approach. It conducted an intensive assessment of the facts, while giving appropriate regard to the Committee’s specialist role. It could consider material additional to that before the Committee.
3. The Family Court judgment contained sustained and serious findings that the applicant had influenced her children, encouraged them to lie to professionals, lied on oath, breached court orders, caused emotional and educational harm, and lacked insight. Those findings were made by a judge well placed to assess the evidence. Together with later allegations that the applicant breached an order and made a false police report, they provided sufficient material to establish a real risk to members of the public arising from her employment, despite the absence of criticism of her clinical practice.
4. For public-interest suspension, necessity means more than desirability and the threshold is high. The court treated this as one of the relatively rare cases in which suspension on public-interest grounds was justified. An analogous inquiry asking whether a reasonable member of the public would be significantly troubled or shocked by the applicant remaining in practice was satisfied. The Committee’s formulation that the public would be troubled may have applied too low a bar, but the error did not undermine the conclusion on the evidence.
5. The Committee’s possible errors concerning the timing and content of the applicant’s disclosure, and the clarity of her response to the allegations, had no material effect. The court proceeded without relying on those matters. The Committee had considered proportionality as a whole, including the impact on the applicant’s children and patients, and was entitled to find conditions of practice unworkable.
6. The parties were invited to draw up an order reflecting the judgment. The court expected the investigation to progress expeditiously and before expiry of the suspension order.