Lockyer report stirs up fierce controversy
- Details
- Published: Wednesday, 13 February 2013 12:57
- Written by Stephen Van Russelt
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The Professional Standards Authority for Health and Social
Care (PSA formerly known as the CHRE) issued a lengthy (249
page) report on February 11, 2013 on concerns raised by the
General Dental Council’s (GDC) former chair, Alison Lockyer. The report has raised an intense debate, not only on GDPUK, but also including the British Dental Association and Dental Protection. This article aims to highlight some of the points made in the report and subsequent reaction. |
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The PSA was asked by the Department of Health on 3 June 2011 to advise whether:
- Concerns which had been raised by the former Chair of the GDC, Alison Lockyer, about the organisation’s governance indicated that the GDC may have been failing to fulfil its statutory functions, or
-
There are concerns about the actions of individuals on the
Council which ought to be drawn to the attention of the Appointments
Commission
In the same letter the Department asked the PSA to pay particular attention to the GDC’s performance in respect of its fitness to practise function.
In a letter to Health secretary, Jeremy Hunt, the PSA said that its overall conclusion was that, despite certain areas of concern identified as part of its investigation, it considered that the GDC was not and is not failing to fulfil its statutory functions, and that none of the actions of its individual Council members ought to be drawn to the attention of the Appointments Commission (now the Privy Council). The report can be found here.
The General Dental Council (GDC) welcomed the findings of the inquiry which, it said, had rejected allegations that the GDC failed in its statutory duties. The GDC Chair Kevin O’Brien said: “We welcome the findings of the PSA’s report and the opportunity to draw a line under this matter. We will review all aspects of the report to ensure we are acting on any lessons to be learnt and we are very pleased that the PSA gives a clear endorsement of reforms we have already introduced. We continue to be focused on our core task of protecting patients.”
The British Dental Association (BDA), however, said the report made concerning reading and raised serious concerns about the performance of the GDC in recent years. Peter Ward, BDA Chief Executive, said: “This report identifies deeply concerning failings around the departure of Dr Lockyer from her role at the GDC. The mishandling of proceedings that is spelt out in this report is astonishing. For a professional regulator to have made such errors in the handling of proceedings is deeply troubling.”
He continued: “Dentistry needs a strong regulator in which practitioners and patients alike can have confidence. The GDC will have a great deal of work to do to assuage the doubts about it that will have been engendered by its handling of Dr Lockyer and convince the profession that it really has achieved the improvements in its regulatory performance that the PSA identifies.”
The report
The PSA concluded that there was ‘instability’ within the executive management team and the staff of the GDC during 2009/10, which contributed to difficulties that the GDC encountered in achieving significant improvement in the organisation’s performance during 2010. In particular, it noted that a number of weaknesses in the Investigating Committee stage of the GDC’s fitness to practise process developed during 2009/10 (partly, it appears as a result of changes that had occurred during 2009) which did not start to be addressed until the new executive management team came into post in early 2011.
The PSA also reported that a ‘lack of clarity’ in 2009/10 about the respective roles of the interim CE, the Chair (a new position at the time), and the newly constituted Council led to uncertainty and a loss of confidence on the part of some Council members in both the first interim CE (Alison White) and in Alison Lockyer (as Chair) They also noted a this loss of confidence by Alison Lockyer in the lay members of the Council and subsequently in Evlynne Gilvarry as CE.
The PSA consider that this lack of clarity of roles, alongside the numerous changes in leadership and staff that occurred during 2009/10 and the lack of adequate performance data available at the time, created obstacles for the GDC’s achievement of its objective of improving its performance.
At the same time, the report concludes ‘there were clearly gaps in the GDC’s governance arrangements (including the lack of an up-to-date procedure for handling complaints about Council members/the Chair). It appears that the Council was slow to address these issues in the first 10 months of 2010.The PSA says: ‘We acknowledge that the loss of the GDC’s Director of Governance in February 2010 and the loss of the GDC’s experienced CE from December 2009 will have contributed to this issue. Nevertheless, the gaps had been identified by the outgoing Council, and therefore must have been apparent to those Council members who had been members of the outgoing Council, including the Chair.’
The PSA considered that Alison Lockyer’s allegation that the GDC did not adequately protect the public during the period when she was Chair demonstrated a misunderstanding of her role as Chair. The PSA notes that the GDC’s Chair is expected to deliver effective strategic leadership of the Council, including oversight of the effective running of the organisation as a whole. The report continues: ‘In our view, if it were established that the GDC had failed to protect the public during the period when Alison Lockyer was the GDC Chair, then she would, by virtue of her role as the Chair at the time, bear some personal responsibility for that failure.’
The PSA does not consider, based on the evidence, that the GDC’s investigations into the matters concerning Alison Lockyer and the two former Investigating Committee Chairs adversely affected the GDC’s ability to manage and progress its programme of improvements. The PSA also concluded that the GDC neither behaved inappropriately in relation to the investigation of the matters that were raised concerning Alison Lockyer and each of the two former Investigating Committee Chairs, nor that the GDC’s actions were triggered by ‘challenges’ that previously had been made by these individuals to the executive.
Comment
The report goes into a great deal of detail about the way in which the GDC Council dealt with the matter. Despite this many questions remain unresolved. Alison Lockyer has issued a brief comment:
‘I am pleased that a light has been shone on some of the problems to which I was seeking to draw attention and if, as a result of this, the task of my successors is easier, I can take considerable comfort from that.
‘It is nevertheless disappointing that the opportunity for a full investigation has been missed and the report from the Professional Standards Authority confines itself to the issues specified by the Department of Health.
‘I am proud to have given over 11 years of service to my professional regulatory body and am very grateful for all the support, both personal and professional, shown to me by friends and colleagues.’
Dental Protection has also commented:
‘One cannot fail to be shocked and deeply concerned at some of the internal processes exposed by the report and surprised that the Council for Healthcare Regulatory Excellence (CHRE), now the Professional Standards Authority could have found them acceptable. There can be few registrants who would want to have been placed in the situation that Alison Lockyer found herself in, and it is perverse that she would have experienced a much fairer process and far better legal protection as a registrant facing Fitness to Practise (FtP) procedures than she did as the Chair of the GDC.
‘The investigation was drawn into other areas, such as the upheavals within the GDC between 2009 and 2011, the massive turnover of GDC staff and the serious problems that beset the FtP procedures throughout that period. While highlighting a long list of failings, which were already well known to CHRE, it is disappointing that there is no mention at all of the impact of these training, procedural and administrative deficiencies upon the many registrants who had cases going through the FtP procedures – and especially its Investigating Committee – at the time in question. These registrants will naturally be left wondering whether their own cases were impacted upon by these serious deficiencies, of which they may not have been aware until now.’
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