The General Medical Council has won a High Court action to have Dr Hadiza Bawa-Garba struck off over the death of six-year-old Jack Adcock.
The General Medical Council (GMC) had appealed against a determination of the Medical Practitioners Tribunal, last June, to impose a sanction of 12 months’ suspension on Bawa-Garba.
The GMC, which has asked Lord Justice Gross and Mr Justice Ouseley to quash that decision and give a direction of erasure from the medical register, said it ‘is not sufficient to protect the public’ in the circumstances of the case.
Charlie Massey, chief executive of the General Medical Council (GMC), said after the ruling: ‘This has been a tragic case; a family has lost their son in terrible circumstances and a doctor has lost her career.
Dr Hadiza Bawa-Garba was found guilty of gross negligence manslaughter over the death of six-year-old Jack Adcock. The High Court has now ruled she can be struck off
Jack’s parents Nicola and Victor Adcock, pictured outside the High Court last month, previously said the doctor has ‘not been held accountable’ after she confused Jack’s case with a child who had a ‘do not resuscitate’ order
‘In today’s ruling the court has confirmed that the tribunal was simply wrong to conclude that public confidence in the profession could be maintained without removing the doctor from the medical register.
He added: ‘We know the strength of feeling expressed by many doctors working in a system under sustained pressure, and we are totally committed to engendering a speak-up culture in the NHS.
‘Doctors should never hesitate to act openly and honestly if something has gone wrong.’
Jack’s mother, Nicola, said: ‘We are absolutely elated with the decision. It’s what we wanted.
‘We don’t want any other family or child to be put in the same situation. She should have been struck off in the first place – it shouldn’t have come to this.
‘I know we’ll never get Jack back but we have got justice for our little boy.’
After a 2015 trial at Nottingham Crown Court, Dr Bawa-Garba was sentenced to two years in prison suspended for two years
Jack, from Glen Parva, Leicestershire, who had Down’s Syndrome and a known heart condition, died at Leicester Royal Infirmary in 2011 after he developed sepsis.
After a 2015 trial at Nottingham Crown Court, Dr Bawa-Garba was sentenced to two years in prison suspended for two years.
During the trial, the prosecution said Jack died after a series of failings by medical staff, including Dr Bawa-Garba’s ‘failure to discharge her duty’ as the responsible doctor.
Sentencing, Mr Justice Nicol said that neither Dr Bawa-Garba or a nurse who was on duty at the time ‘gave Jack the priority which this very sick boy deserved’.
Ivan Hare QC, for the GMC, told the judges that the Tribunal placed too much weight on the circumstances at the hospital which may have contributed to Jack’s death and the remediation and personal mitigation in Dr Bawa-Garba’s case.
Speaking today, Jack’s mother, Nicola, welcomed the decision and said: ‘I know we’ll never get Jack back but we have got justice for our little boy’
It also failed to have regard to the effect of the sentencing remarks of the judge whose ‘clear expectation’ was that Dr Bawa-Garba would be struck off.
Sean Larkin QC, for Dr Bawa-Garba, had said that the suspension sanction was sufficient to protect the public.
The Tribunal had also directed that a review should take place before it expired to determine whether any further action was required.
Dr Bawa-Garba’s ‘exemplary record’ as a specialist registrar for almost five years until her conviction and how she addressed her clinical failings rightly weighed heavily in her favour, Mr Larkin added.
There was ‘no hard and fast rule’ that a conviction of manslaughter must lead to erasure and the judge’s sentencing remarks were not binding upon the Tribunal.