Professional Standards (Hansard, 12 January 1993)

§ Mr. Roger Evans (Monmouth)

I beg to move,

That leave be given to bring in a Bill to require the observance of the highest professional standards; to provide for enforcement and compensation by means of a system of tribunals; to place a duty upon professions to investigate and pursue complaints against them; and for connected purposes. I must at the outset declare my interest, as a barrister. I must also assure the media that this is not an attempt to deal with the Calcutt report at an early stage. I am talking about the traditional professions such as those of medicine, the law, architects, quantity surveyors and engineers.

My Bill seeks to deal with the fact that the traditional professions have been reluctant to deal as a matter of professional discipline with the issue of bad professional work or work below an acceptable professional standard. Professional discipline has traditionally been limited to serious misconduct, such as putting one's hand in the till or engaging in a breach of advertising regulations.

Members of the public wishing to complain about bad professional work are left to sue in the courts. That is resulting in a mounting accumulation of problems. Because the professions will not discipline their members, professional indemnity insurance premiums are rising. While that cost is being passed on in part to the public, both good and bad professionals are having to bear that burden.

Because many of the legal claims involved are settled by insurers privately, nobody knows whether the professional whom one engages has a good or poor track record. The legal aid fund is hard pressed and many just claims cannot be brought because of lack of means. The law in any event does not impose a particularly high standard when judging bad professional work—simply the minimum standard of reasonable skill which some section of the professions to which I referred says is good enough.

The time has come for the great self-regulating professions to put their affairs in order and to set up a proper system to deal professionally with substandard work and for fully compensating the public for losses occasioned by bad work.

The proposals for which I seek the approval of the House consist of several points. First, each profession should set up a tribunal with full powers to try and to determine cases of bad professional work and to award full compensation at law to members of the public where professionals are adjudged not to have carried out work to an acceptable standard. Secondly, as these tribunals would comprise the leading experts in the particular profession, the old, lax standard of "reasonable care" would be replaced in law by a new professional obligation to observe the highest professional standards according to the state of the art at the time and the professions would be required to publish regularly, for their members and the public, updated guidance with regard to the standards.

Thirdly—and this is a crucial proposal—a tribunal, when finding a case of bad work, would not only award compensation but would have a duty to discipline the offending professional. Fourthly, the composition and procedure of these tribunals should be specified and set out in detail by way of statutory instrument. However, I 770 suggest that a number of important minimum criteria should be set down in the Bill. Each tribunal should have a member who is not a member of the particular profession and should have a legally qualified chairman. The tribunals should sit in public and their record and findings should be made public. To protect professionals against frivolous and vexatious complaints, there should be a procedure of summary dismissal of frivolous complaints. No fees should be charged for bringing a complaint before any one of these tribunals.

§ Mr. Evans

The hon. Member for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner), from a sedentary position, seems to indicate that Members of Parliament are members of a profession. That is a quaint and eccentric view of the law, but this modest measure is not intended to extend to Members of the House.

The hon. Member for Bolsover, bearing in mind the problems of his constituents, might like to contemplate my fifth proposal rather more carefully. My suggestion is that each profession should not only set up this system but also pay for its operation and for a proper system of legal representation for complainants—in other words, a scheme of preparation, investigation and presentation—and that the operation and requirements of such schemes should be set out in a code of practice, which would be laid down by the Lord Chancellor and with which the profession would have to comply.

Sixthly—and lastly—the courts of the land should have power to stay actions and to refer cases and issues in actions to the relevant professional tribunal where a breach of this new professional obligation is alleged.

The professions themselves have moved very slowly in the direction that I am suggesting. The General Medical Council, for example, has set up new performance procedures, but there is no suggestion of public hearings or of compensation. The Solicitors Complaints Bureau has been able to award compensation up to the grand sum of £1,000 in cases coming before it after 1 April 1991. These steps indicate recognition of the problem, but they are not enough. I am seeking the leave of the House to bring in a Bill to restore public confidence in the great self-regulating professions by giving them modern powers and duties to set up a system of dealing with bad professional work and of compensating members of the public fully in cases where bad work is proven. That is the purpose of the measure.