Jucial Review, appealing against the HPC decisions

Someone had been advised by the HPC that the only means of redress open to them after a decision had been made by the HPC was via a judicial review. They duly set one in process, and hired a solicitor. Only then did they discover that they were not in a position to put such a process into play.

This case involved an NHS manager who had been sacked. The HPC tend to trawl these cases and bring them into their own net to re-play the scene and ring out the surplus value. The upshot of this is that the HPC then becomes the complainant in the HPC Process. People who had been involved in the original case might be forgiven for thinking that they still had a part in this second playing of the scene, but in fact they don't. The HPC take over the show - in this way they act on behalf of an imaginary public and take a local sacking into a national misdemeanour.

There are two threads - one is the way a local event is passed to a central court (local difficulties acquire national status), the other is the question of self interest. The original professions were attacked on the grounds that they couldn't be trusted to keep their house in order as they were likely to be biased in their own favour. This inconvenient truth, however, also applies to any new body set up to keep order, it is part of life and must be dealt with by each of us as we act. The idea was that the HPC would always be objective because it has no interest in the professions it manages. However, this completely ignores the interest it has in maintaining itself - it is a naive, puerile view. The HPC is left with no other purpose than to maintain a register and police it - it is administrator, law enforcer, law interpreter, law maker. In the case of the original professions they were also interested in the work itself, and the knowledge pertaining to the work. In fact they were more interested in the work itself for without it they would cease to exist. In the case of the HPC their work - their trade, their profession so to speak - is administrative and legal. They are not interested in the actual work of the people over whom they have such far reaching legal powers. Their business is collecting names onto registers (and money associated), arranging the lists, creating sets of abstract standards of character and practise at a distance, and of enforcing these standards. That's it. It is a false profession, based on nothing. They are under the jurisdiction of another such body (the CHRE) and each of these is under the jurisdiction of the Privy Council, as far as I can see.

My contention is that the HPC is an artificial creation based on a false assumption. This is very shaky ground which sets up a need for a strong policing in order to make it work - an artificial force takes the place of any possible natural order. This sets up an absolute system and places far too much power in the hands of a small set of people. It is a very tricky situation, and one which is out of balance with the requirements of the situation.

It has been very common to explain the creation of the HPC and the CHRE through reference to Harold Shipman. The fear that is created by this move is two fold. There is the fear invoked through reference to a serial killer, and there is fear invoked by the irrationality of the reference to the subject in question. That is, there is no rational link between this murderer, and the creation of a large list, a centralised knowledge base, and an aggressive police force. The link has more in common with a paranoid idea than it does with reason, experience, and rationality.