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An important aspect of legal process is, of course, procedural fairness, as much applicable to professional disciplinary proceedings as to other trials. We now also have the additional requirement imposed by Art 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights (the Convention) that provides that “everyone is entitled to a fair and public hearing within a reasonable period of time”. The question of undue delay was the issue that primarly exercised the
Administrative Court in Selvarajan v General Medical Council( 2008) EWHC 182 (Admin), [2008] All ER (D) 110 (Feb). Dr Selvarajan was a general practitioner who was alleged to have defrauded the local health authority of £150,000 by falsely prescribing drugs, sharing the spoils with a local chemist who had purported to have dispensed the drugs. These activities took place between 1994 and 1996. It was only in March 2006 that the General Medical Council (GMC) got around to imposing the sanction of erasure from the medical register on the doctor. He appealed on the ground that the GMC had misdirected itself on the relevance of the passage of time. Much investigation appears to have
