The barrister who presents your case to a medical practitioners tribunal will cross examine the GMC's witnesses and test its expert. That barrister will also speak for you when the tribunal decides on impairment and sanction. You will spend more time with that person in the weeks before a hearing than with anyone else on your case. So take care when choosing a barrister for your MPTS hearing, and choose early.
Experience that matches your case
Regulatory work before the MPTS is a specialism of its own. Ask how many MPTS hearings the barrister has conducted for doctors, not the GMC, in the last two years. Ask, too, whether any involved allegations like yours. A case about clinical care turns on expert evidence and the standard of a reasonably competent doctor in your specialty. A case about honesty or sexual misconduct turns on the credibility of witnesses and on findings of fact. Some barristers are strongest in one kind of case.
Ask too about the stages after the facts. A good part of the work at a tribunal concerns insight, remediation and sanction. If the tribunal finds against you on the facts, an advocate who prepared for that stage alone leaves you exposed.
Check the register
The Bar Standards Board keeps a public register of barristers. Its guidance for the public covers someone who claims to be a barrister but is not listed on the register. In that case, it says, they may not be allowed to practise. Use the register to confirm that the barrister holds a current practising certificate before anything else. The BSB also points the public to the Bar Council's Direct Access Portal. There you can find barristers authorised to work with the public directly.
How public access works
Barristers usually take instructions through a solicitor. But under the public access rules in the BSB Handbook, a barrister may take instructions direct from you instead. That is subject to conditions.
- Rule C120 requires the barrister to hold a full practising certificate and to have completed public access training. The barrister must also be registered with the Bar Standards Board as a public access practitioner. In addition, the barrister must take steps to make sure you can decide whether to apply for legal aid instead. The BSB's guidance for the public adds a point here. If you use a public access barrister, you cannot usually apply for legal aid.
- Rule C121 deals with a barrister of less than three years' standing. Such a barrister must have a qualified public access barrister readily available to give guidance.
- Rule C122 forbids a barrister from accepting public access instructions in some cases. That applies where it would be in your best interests, or in the interests of justice, for you to instruct a solicitor or other professional client.
- Rule C125 applies once the barrister accepts instructions. The barrister must then write to you setting out the work agreed. If the barrister is not authorised to conduct litigation, the letter must say more. It must state that they cannot be expected to perform the functions of a solicitor. Where an intermediary has arranged the instruction, there is a further requirement. The letter must also say that the barrister is independent of the intermediary and has no liability for it.
- Rule C129 requires the barrister to keep records of the instructions and advice for at least seven years.
In practice this means someone has to do the work a solicitor would otherwise do. That work includes collecting evidence, corresponding with the GMC, preparing bundles and taking witness statements. Make sure you know who that is before the case starts.
Fees and availability
The BSB's guidance tells you that barristers should be clear about costs. If a barrister's website does not show the information, it says, you can ask for it in writing. Ask for the fee for each stage and for each hearing day. Ask, too, what happens if the barrister is unavailable on your hearing dates, and who would step in. That matters because a replacement brought in late will not know your case as well.
What a tribunal notices
I sat as a fee paid judge of the County Court for more than four years. In my view, the advocates who help their clients most know the papers thoroughly. They concede what they cannot win and spend their time on the points that decide the case. Be wary of anyone who promises to win every point.
How Eloquia approaches it
We involve a specialist barrister from the outset of every case to give you additional support and advice. Every fee includes counsel. The barrister works on your case from the first response to the GMC. So the advocate at the hearing is someone who helped shape it. A medical practitioners tribunal hearing costs £8,000 plus VAT for preparation and £4,000 plus VAT for each hearing day. The fees exclude expert fees and other expenses, which we quote separately.
The same questions apply if your hearing is before the NMC's Fitness to Practise Committee, a GDC practice committee, an HCPC panel or the committees of the GPhC, the GOC, the GOsC or the GCC, and our pages for each profession set out how each hearing runs.
Eloquia acts for doctors in GMC investigations and tribunal hearings on fixed fees by stage, each stated plus VAT. Our fees and funding page sets out each stage. Our article on fixed fees in regulatory defence works through an example.
