AC-2024-LON-003354 - [2025] EWHC 2270 (Admin)

Fecha: 05-Sep-2025

The Statutory Framework

The Statutory Framework.

The MA 1983

19.

The defendant’s statutory purposes are set out in s 1 of the Act:

(1)

There shall continue to be a body corporate known as the General Medical Council (in this Act referred to as “the General Council”) having the functions assigned to them by this Act.

1(A) The over-arching objective of the General Council in exercising their functions is the protection of the public.

1(B) The pursuit by the General Council of their over-arching objective involves the pursuit of the following objectives—

(a)

to protect, promote and maintain the health, safety and well-being of the public,

(b)

to promote and maintain public confidence in the medical profession, and

(c)

to promote and maintain proper professional standards of conduct for members of that profession.

20.

Paragraph 9A of Schedule 1 to the MA 1983 specifies that, in exercising its functions, the defendant must have regard to ‘the interests of persons using or needing the services of provisionally or fully registered medical practitioners in the United Kingdom’, and to cooperate (insofar as appropriate and reasonably practicable) with public bodies and other persons concerned with the regulation of other health care professionals, the regulation of health services, and the provision, supervision or management of health services.

21.

Section 2(1) MA 1983 requires the defendant to establish a register of ‘medical practitioners’.

22.

Part II of the MA 1983 describes the defendant’s responsibilities in relation to the medical education and registration of doctors. Part IIIA concerns licenses to practise. Part IV contains general provisions on registration. Section 29A(2) imposes a duty upon the defendant to make regulations with respect to the licences to practise of medical practitioners. Such regulations include the current Fitness to Practise Rules 2004 (as amended). That document should be read alongside other relevant guidance (including GMP and other subsidiary guidance) produced by the defendant. To that end, section 29G empowers the defendant to issue guidance to doctors for the purposes of obtaining a licence or revalidation; and s. 35 enables it to ‘provide, in such manner as the Council think fit, advice for members of the medical profession on – (a) standards of professional conduct; (b) standards of professional performance; or (c) medical ethics’.