MAJORITY REPORT. 
442. On questions of procedure for dealing with complaints 
against practitioners, the British Medical Association made 
certain suggestions for the alteration of the Regulations, and 
also formulated certain principles which they considered ought 
to be observed in the exercise of the powers possessed by the 
Minister under the present Regulations. The alterations of 
Regulations suggested were : (1) that all complaints against a 
practitioner should, in the first instance, be sent to the Chairman 
of the Local Medical Committee and the chief administrative 
medical officer of the Liocal Authority ; (2) that only such cases as 
could not be settled by them with the acquiescence of both parties 
should proceed further; (3) that questions of general conduct, 
detrimental to the service, or of giving false certificates should 
be reported upon in the first instance by the Local Medical 
Committee ; (4) that an appeal to the Courts should be possible 
not only on the ground of improper procedure as at present, 
but on the ground that the penalty inflicted was out of 
proportion te the offence; (5) that in the case of proposed re- 
moval from the service the practitioner should have the right 
of appeal to a duly constituted central professional committee, 
and that the Minister of Health, in cases where this right was 
exercised, should not be able to remove the practitioner from 
the service unless the central professional committee advised thie 
course. (App. XLVII, 41.) 
443. The first two of these proposals involve entrasting to a 
purely medical body the duty of considering whether the com:- 
plaint against a practitioner should, or should not, be proceeded 
with. Such an arrangement appears to us highly undesirable, 
and we gather that it was not pressed by the witnesses who 
appeared on behalf of the Association (Q. 15,226). We are also 
not satisfied that there is any good reason for the exclusion of 
the lay element from the primary investigation of the class of 
cases referred to in (3). 
444. The fourth proposal involves placing upon the Courts 
of Law the responsibility for deciding questions of a kind which, 
In our opinion, can be more appropriately decided by a Minister 
who ig answerable to Parliament for the manner in which he 
exercises his discretion. The fifth proposal we are also unable 
to accept. We appreciate that removal from the medical list 
may be, and usually is, a very severe penalty, but it has fo 
be remembered that the ground of removal is that the retention 
of the practitioner would be prejudicial to the efficiency of the 
medical service of the insured persons, and it would, in our 
judgment, be contrary to sound constitutional practice that the 
Ministers responsibility to Parliament for the maintenance of an 
efficient service should be delegated to an outside body, whether 
professional or otherwise. 
445. The four principles which the Association submitted for 
our consideration, not as requiring alterations in the Regulations,