AC-2025-LON-000160 - [2025] EWHC 3006 (Admin)

Ground 2 relates closely to ground 1. It relates to a point the PCC made in considering the extent of Mr Mobasseri’s dishonesty under charge 7(b). Charge 7(b) included the allegation that Mr Mobasseri’s conduct at charge 4 (amending the clinical records retrospectively of Patients 1-15) had been dishonest. Mr Mobasseri admitted that. (Footnote: ³) However, the PCC found that Mr Mobasseri’s dishonesty in relation to the retrospective amendment of those clinical records went further than he had admitted:

“In respect of the addition of BPE scores, you accepted that these were “made up” but maintained that you would have carried out the BPE at the appointment and that the retrospective scores (usually recorded by you as 222/222) were a rough estimate of what you think the scores were likely to have been based on other clinical data available to you. The Committee rejected your evidence and determined that the BPEs had not in fact been carried out. The Committee therefore found that your dishonesty in respect of the BPEs was not confined to simply retrospectively “making up” scores: you added those scores to give the impression that you had in fact carried out the BPE when you knew that this was not likely to be the case.”

In other words, the PCC found that the false recording of BPEs had been dishonest not only to the extent acknowledged by Mr Mobasseri (in the sense they had been “made up” ex post facto but presented as contemporaneous to hide inadequate record-keeping) but also dishonest in seeking to present the impression he had carried out BPEs when he knew it was likely he had not done so. In this appeal, Mr Mobasseri contended the PCC was wrong so to have found, stating that the PCC had failed to take proper account of Nurse A’s evidence about his general practice of undertaking BPEs, such that the proper inference to draw as to Mr Mobasseri’s state of mind when inserting ex post facto the made up BPE scores was not that he knew he had failed to undertake a BPE on those occasions, but that he thought he probably had undertaken a BPE (but that the scores had not, for some reason, been recorded). Mr Mobasseri also contended that this finding by the PCC was one of the “building blocks” used to find that the case against him on dishonesty was made out in respect of the Charge 5 conduct (dishonesty in relation to which he challenges on this appeal).

I can deal with the last of those points (that this finding was used as a “building block” to other findings on dishonesty) shortly. There is no suggestion in the PCC’s decision that this was the way in which it reasoned or reached its decision on dishonesty as to the Charge 5 matters. At the outset of its decision on Charge 7(b), the PCC recorded that it had accepted the advice of its Legal Advisor, that “the dishonesty alleged in respect of charge 5 must be considered entirely separately on its own” and separately from the dishonesty (which was admitted) in respect of charges 4 and 6. It went on to consider Mr Mobasseri’s dishonesty in respect of the conduct under Charges 4 and 6, recognising his admission of dishonesty in relation to that conduct, and also carrying out its own analysis, so as to find the charge of dishonesty proved in respect of charges 4 and 6. The PCC then went on to consider the dishonesty alleged in respect of the charge 5 conduct, and did so separately in relation to each patient or sub-group of patients (as I also consider them below). There is no reference in the part of the PCC’s decision dealing with dishonesty is respect of the charge 5 conduct to its earlier findings in relation to dishonesty in respect of Mr Mobasseri’s making up the BPE scores or to dishonesty in respect of the charge 4 conduct more generally. The finding challenged under ground 2 was not, either expressly or implicitly, a ”building block” to the PCC’s findings as to dishonesty in relation to the Charge 5 conduct.

As to the challenge to the PCC’s finding that Mr Mobasseri’s dishonesty in respect of the made up BPE scores went further than he had admitted, the basis for it was thin. It largely rested on the contention that, based upon Nurse A’s evidence, Mr Mobasseri’s general practice had been to undertake BPEs. However, as is evident from the matters I have identified above, in relation to Ground 1, the evidence of such a “general practice” was not consistent, and the PCC was entitled to reach a different view. Indeed, in light of the matters set out by the PCC that I have quoted at paragraph 51(v) above (which themselves were not challenged on appeal), it is more likely that Mr Mobasseri did not have such a general practice, having scant regard for the importance of BPEs.

It is a fair comment that the word “therefore” in the section of the PCC’s reasoning that is challenged under Ground (see the quotation set out at paragraph 57 above) covers some rather compressed reasoning, but the paragraph in question has to be read with the findings made by the PCC under Ground 1, dealing with the BPE allegations. Moreover, as was noted by Morris J in Ali v SRA (above), “decisions of specialist tribunals are not expected to be the product of elaborate legal drafting” and their “judgments should be read as a whole”. When read in context, and along with the PCC’s earlier findings, it is clear that it found that Mr Mobasseri had not only not carried out the BPEs on the occasions in question, but also that when ex post facto adding in the made up scores to the clinical records, he knew it was likely he had not carried out the BPEs on these occasions. The PCC was entitled to find (as it did at the end of the passage quoted at paragraph 51(v) above) that Mr Mobasseri did not routinely carry out BPEs, and therefore must have had in mind (when later revisiting his notes, including to add in the made up scores) that he knew he had not routinely carried out BPEs, and thus it was likely that when he saw no BPE recorded in the original notes he would have realised it was likely that, on those occasions, he had not carried out a BPE.

The appeal under ground 2 therefore must fail.