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Dr. Ghosh

: First, I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Blyth Valley (Mr. Campbell) on securing the debate. This matter is clearly of great concern to him and, as he said, he has made representations to Ministers about it in the past. I hope that my hon. Friend will understand that it is difficult for me to comment on individual cases, but I thought that it would help if I set out the procedures by which general practitioners in the NHS are regulated. GPs are covered by the Health and Social Care Act 2001, which requires them to be registered on primary care trust lists to provide or to assist in providing general medical services. That enables PCTs to refuse to admit doctors to, or to remove them from, the lists on grounds of unsuitability, inefficiency or fraud, and to suspend GPs to protect patients or act in the public interest. The Act also abolished the NHS tribunal and established the Family Health Services Appeals Authority as an independent tribunal. Under the National Health Service (Performers List) Regulations 2004, which came into force last year, a PCT is expected to investigate any concerns about any aspect of a doctor's performance. Those concerns can be based on information from any source. In the most serious cases, the sanction can be dismissal—removal from the PCT's performers list. As I have said, the grounds for removal from the list are unsuitability, inefficiency and fraud. The PCT can also consider suspension from NHS practice as an interim measure to protect patients or to act in the public interest while an investigation is under way. When considering a suspension—which is not considered punitive, but a neutral act—PCTs are free to consider any information brought to their attention by a patient or other person or body, information obtained through the PCT's management of primary care in its locality, or any combination of the two. The suspension must be reviewed regularly. Each primary care trust is responsible for carrying out its responsibility for maintaining its performers list, and the regulations set out the decisions that the PCT can make and the notifications and time frames with which it must comply. Each PCT is responsible for drawing up its own procedures for carrying out the process, including the composition of the panel if there is to be a hearing. Panel proceedings are for the PCT to determine, but they have to be in line with guidance produced by my Department. If a PCT decides to remove a doctor, there is a right of appeal to the FHSAU, which, as I have said, is an independent tribunal. There is not a right of appeal against suspension, because that is considered to be a neutral act designed to protect patients or the public. Given that framework, I hope that I can assure my hon. Friend that the Northumberland care trust has followed due process in their treatment of Dr. Ghosh. Once the trust was made aware of the serious allegations against Dr. Ghosh and the serious nature of the employment tribunal's findings in January, there was a duty to investigate.