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Health and Social Care Bill

Amendments Nos. 122 to 125 propose changes to the composition of the fitness-to-practise panels of OHPA. Amendments Nos. 122, 123 and 125 would impose a panel of five members, no matter what the circumstances of the proceedings before it. Clause 95 provides for OHPA to have a panel of three members, a chair, a lay member and a professionally qualified member, with additional members appointed as necessary. This provides the flexibility for OHPA to form large panels in complex cases, while ensuring that a quorum of three members is all that is required to ensure that a decision can be reached. I suggest that to impose a fixed number of five panellists on OHPA would remove this flexibility and inflate the size and cost of panels needed to conduct adjudication procedures. In my view, the cost is not the issue—