Collins Judith: Health Practitioners Competence Assurance Bill — In Committee 
Collins Judith: Health Practitioners Competence Assurance Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:611;Page:8138] 
JUDITH COLLINS (NZ National—Clevedon) 
: 
 In relation to this particular complaints-processing part of the bill the Health Committee I felt really tried hard to get a good consensus view. I was very impressed by the contributions of all members of the committee in trying to reach a sensible workable solution that would work well not only for the public but also for the health professionals and those accused of misconduct. We had some concerns however and we noted those in the minority report—a quite substantial minority report. 
In particular we were concerned that insufficient weight had been given by the balance of the committee to the submission from Wendy Brandon who was representing the New Zealand Law Society. She was also there in her own right as the former chair of the Medical Practitioners Disciplinary Tribunal. She is a person with 6 years’ experience in this particular area who is known to me as a very sensible level-headed person who is not only a lawyer but used to be a nurse and so brings a new perspective to this area. 
One of the concerns that Mrs Brandon had was that there should be two levels of charges before the disciplinary tribunal. That issue was of concern to us in the National Party and also to ACT—that under this bill the severity of the offence makes no difference to the naming of the charge. In other words a doctor who rapes his patient will be charged under this particular bill—obviously outside the criminal area—with exactly the same charge as someone who makes an error in judgment. The National Party is very concerned because there is a huge difference in reality between levels of misconduct. What we are talking about here is just one size fits all. One of the problems with this bill which we have spoken extensively on in the last 2 days is that it is trying to do too much and to say that everyone is just the same. Well no everyone is not the same. I think the patients of the former Dr Fahey would feel somewhat aggrieved that he could be charged and found guilty of professional misconduct in the same way as a doctor who made an error but certainly was not a serial rapist. So that is one of our concerns with this bill. 
We are of course always concerned about the level of political appointment to bodies such as the tribunal. We were however very pleased that common sense dictated that the tribunal will comprise three professional peers of the person accused and two laypersons one being the chairperson of the tribunal. I think that is a very sensible solution. Some groups of people representing patients or former complainants felt that there should be only one professional peer on the tribunal or none. Some wanted no lawyers involved which I thought was quite interesting from a natural justice point of view. They really showed unfortunately that they are somewhat one-sided and one-eyed occasionally in these matters. It is very very important that any disciplinary process has the support of the professionals it deals with—the health practitioners—because without the support of the professions it will not succeed and that is very very clear. The medical professionals or health practitioners involved in these tribunal hearings must feel they are being dealt with fairly. 
Certainly my own experience through the Law Society working on the complaints committees has been that the professional peers are almost always harder and tougher on the person complained about than the laypeople are. Laypeople tend to have a much kinder and much more understanding view of mistakes and errors.