Select Committee on Health Minutes of Evidence



Examination of witnesses (Questions 277 - 279)

THURSDAY 1 JULY 1999

PROFESSOR HILARY THOMAS, MISS ISABEL NISBET, MISS MANDIE LAVIN, DR CHRISTINE TOMKINS and DR STEPHEN GREEN

  Chairman: Colleagues, welcome to this session of the Committee, and I particularly welcome our witnesses. Before we begin, can I ask if there are any declarations of interest among our members?

  Dr Stoate: Chairman, can I declare an interest in that I am registered with the General Medical Council and I am a member of the Medical Defence Union.

  Dr Brand: Likewise, Chairman, can I also declare that I am registered with the General Medical Council. I hope this morning's events will not make a difference to that! I belong to a fellow protection organisation.

Professor Hilary Thomas, Miss Isabel Nisbet, Miss Mandie Lavin, Dr Christine Tomkins and Dr Stephen Green

Chairman

  277. Thank you. Can I thank our witnesses for the very helpful written evidence and can I begin by asking each of you to introduce yourselves briefly to the Committee?
  (Miss Nisbet) My name is Isabel Nisbet and I am the Director of Fitness to Practice at the General Medical Council. As I think the Committee knows, until the end of March of this year and for four years before that, I was the Deputy Health Service Ombudsman. I would like to convey to the Committee the apologies of Sir Donald Irvine, the president, who is on holiday and was very sorry not to be here but glad to be represented by Professor Thomas on my right.
  (Professor Thomas) I am Hilary Thomas, I am a practising oncologist. I took up the post of professor of oncology at the Royal Surrey County Hospital and the University of Surrey in September last. I am a member of the GMC, an elected medical member, and have been for the past five years and have just been re-elected. I am also a member of the standards committee and a medical screener and a member of the re-validation steering group.
  (Miss Lavin) My name is Mandie Lavin. I am Director of Professional Conduct at the United Kingdom Central Council for Nursing, Midwifery and Health Visiting. I have been in post for three years in the UKCC and previously had a role as regional medico-legal adviser for the Anglian and Oxford Region.
  (Dr Tomkins) Good morning. I am Christine Tomkins, I am Professional Services Director in the Medical Defence Union. I was an ophthalmologist in the Health Service until 1985 and have been with the Medical Defence Union since 1985.
  (Dr Green) Good morning. I am Stephen Green, I am head of Risk Management at the MDU and have been for the last seven years. Previously I was a general practitioner in the north west of the UK for 15 years.

  278. Thank you. I mentioned your written evidence has been very helpful and detailed, but one of the areas I did not see in the evidence from the UKCC and the GMC was who actually makes the decisions on these two bodies, how you are made up, your membership. Professor Thomas, you referred to the fact you were elected, could you describe a little about who serves on the GMC, and perhaps we can have a similar discussion with the UKCC in a moment, so we are aware of how it is constituted?
  (Professor Thomas) It has 104 members, of whom—and Isabel may have to correct me on some of the minutia here—there are 54 elected members, 42 for England, and 2 for Northern Ireland,7 for Scotland and 3 for Wales . There are 25 lay members, which was increased from 13 approximately four years ago, and the remaining members are appointed by bodies such as the colleges and other councils who have a rotating membership. So the different bodies rotate amongst the 25 members. Therefore we have about a quarter lay membership now.

  279. Could you explain how the election process works? The electorate are people, presumably, like our two colleagues here who have declared an interest?
  (Professor Thomas) Every member on the register—and we have 180,000 doctors on the medical register—is balloted. This year there were 330 candidates in the constituency of England, which meant it was an extremely large ballot paper, but everybody is entitled to vote and as a result of a single transferable vote system the members are elected and the results of the most recent elections were available last Friday. In Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland, the electorate is smaller, as are the number of candidates. There are two members in Northern Ireland and slightly more for Scotland and Wales.


 
previous page contents next page

House of Commons home page Parliament home page House of Lords home page search page enquiries

© Parliamentary copyright 1999
Prepared 29 July 1999