Our ref: F09/2200/ME

Dear Mr Thackeray

Information Request

Thank you for your email of 7 April 2009 in which you request information
in accordance with the provisions of the Freedom of Information Act 2000
(FOIA).

We will consider your request and you will normally receive the
information you seek within the 20 working day limit set by the FOIA.

The FOIA lists a number of exemptions that may prevent the release of
part, or all, of the information that you have requested. We will make an
assessment of the requested information and if it is subject to an
exemption you will be informed of this, together with details of your
right of appeal.

Your request has been allocated to Mark Ellen. If you have any queries
concerning your request you can contact Mr Ellen on 0161 923 6347 or email
[email address]

Yours sincerely

Janet Maclean

Information Access Team Administrator

0161 923 6324

[email address]

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Dear Mr Thackeray

Thank you for your e-mail in which you set out a Freedom of Information
request in respect of the GMC hearings concerning Professor Southall.

I have passed your request for the transcripts of these cases to my
colleagues in our fitness to practise directorate. You should hear from
them shortly regarding this.

We hold a substantial amount of material in respect of the exhibits you
have asked for, and this is not held electronically. I can e-mail you
the information that you seek but this will have to be done in 2 or 3
batches. I will send these through to you under separate cover. The
e-mails will include the minutes of all the cases concerning Professor
Southall.

Finally, there are a number of exhibits connected with this case which I
consider to be exempt from disclosure because an exemption set out in
the FOIA applies to their release. In accordance with the requirements
of the FOIA this e-mail acts as a refusal notice in this regard. The
exemption that applies is:

Section 40(2) by virtue of section 40(3)(a)(i) - Personal information
of a third party. This relates to information requested which relates to
a third party, and the disclosure of which would be in breach of the
Principles of the Data Protection Act 1998 (DPA). In this instance we
believe that the disclosure of this type of information would breach the
First Principle of the DPA, which requires that the processing of
personal data is fair and lawful.

This exemption is absolute, which means that it is not subject to a
public interest test (in order to assess if the public interest is
greater served by disclosing the information than maintaining the
exemption).

You have the right of appeal against this decision. If you wish to
appeal please set out in writing your grounds for doing so and e-mail
Julian Graves, Information Access Manager at [email address]. You
also have a further right of appeal to the Information Commissioner. If
applicable, Mr Graves will provide you with details of how to appeal to
the Information Commissioner.

Yours sincerely

Mark Ellen
Information Access Team
General Medical Council
79 Oxford Street
Manchester M1 6FQ
Direct Line: 0161 923 6347

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Dear Mr Thackeray.

Here are the minutes of the Professor Southall cases as per my previous
e-mail.

Regards
Mark Ellen

Unless otherwise expressly agreed by the sender of this email, this communication may contain privileged or confidential information which is exempt from disclosure under UK law. This email and its attachments may not be used or disclosed except for the purpose for which it has been sent.

If you are not the addressee or have received this email in error, please do not read, print, re-transmit, store or act in reliance on it or any attachments. Instead, please email the sender and then immediately delete it.

General Medical Council

St James Building, 79 Oxford Street, Manchester, M1 6FQ

Regents Place, 350 Euston Road, London, NW1 3JN

The Tun, 4 Jacksons Entry, Holyrood Road, Edinburgh, EH8 8AE

Regus House, Falcon Drive, Cardiff Bay, CF10 4RU

20 Adelaide Street, Belfast, BT2 8GD

The GMC is a charity registered in England and Wales (1089278) and Scotland (SC037750)

Dear Mr Thackeray

As promised, here are the exhibits as per my previous e-mail.

Regards
Mark Ellen

Unless otherwise expressly agreed by the sender of this email, this communication may contain privileged or confidential information which is exempt from disclosure under UK law. This email and its attachments may not be used or disclosed except for the purpose for which it has been sent.

If you are not the addressee or have received this email in error, please do not read, print, re-transmit, store or act in reliance on it or any attachments. Instead, please email the sender and then immediately delete it.

General Medical Council

St James Building, 79 Oxford Street, Manchester, M1 6FQ

Regents Place, 350 Euston Road, London, NW1 3JN

The Tun, 4 Jacksons Entry, Holyrood Road, Edinburgh, EH8 8AE

Regus House, Falcon Drive, Cardiff Bay, CF10 4RU

20 Adelaide Street, Belfast, BT2 8GD

The GMC is a charity registered in England and Wales (1089278) and Scotland (SC037750)

Mr Thackeray

Thanks for this. I think the best way forward is for me to forward your
e-mail to Julian Graves who can then look at this via our appeals
process.
Mr Graves will contact you in due course regarding this.

Regards
Mark Ellen

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Dear Mr Thackery

Please find attached transcripts for Dr Southall as requested

Helen

Unless otherwise expressly agreed by the sender of this email, this
communication may contain privileged or confidential information which is
exempt from disclosure under UK law. This email and its attachments may
not be used or disclosed except for the purpose for which it has been
sent.

If you are not the addressee or have received this email in error, please
do not read, print, re-transmit, store or act in reliance on it or any
attachments. Instead, please email the sender and then immediately delete
it.

General Medical Council

St James Building, 79 Oxford Street, Manchester, M1 6FQ

Regents Place, 350 Euston Road, London, NW1 3JN

The Tun, 4 Jacksons Entry, Holyrood Road, Edinburgh, EH8 8AE

Regus House, Falcon Drive, Cardiff Bay, CF10 4RU

20 Adelaide Street, Belfast, BT2 8GD

The GMC is a charity registered in England and Wales (1089278) and
Scotland (SC037750)

Unless otherwise expressly agreed by the sender of this email, this
communication may contain privileged or confidential information which is
exempt from disclosure under UK law. This email and its attachments may
not be used or disclosed except for the purpose for which it has been
sent.

If you are not the addressee or have received this email in error, please
do not read, print, re-transmit, store or act in reliance on it or any
attachments. Instead, please email the sender and then immediately delete
it.

General Medical Council

St James Building, 79 Oxford Street, Manchester, M1 6FQ

Regents Place, 350 Euston Road, London, NW1 3JN

The Tun, 4 Jacksons Entry, Holyrood Road, Edinburgh, EH8 8AE

Regus House, Falcon Drive, Cardiff Bay, CF10 4RU

20 Adelaide Street, Belfast, BT2 8GD

The GMC is a charity registered in England and Wales (1089278) and
Scotland (SC037750)

Unless otherwise expressly agreed by the sender of this email, this
communication may contain privileged or confidential information which is
exempt from disclosure under UK law. This email and its attachments may
not be used or disclosed except for the purpose for which it has been
sent.

If you are not the addressee or have received this email in error, please
do not read, print, re-transmit, store or act in reliance on it or any
attachments. Instead, please email the sender and then immediately delete
it.

General Medical Council

St James Building, 79 Oxford Street, Manchester, M1 6FQ

Regents Place, 350 Euston Road, London, NW1 3JN

The Tun, 4 Jacksons Entry, Holyrood Road, Edinburgh, EH8 8AE

Regus House, Falcon Drive, Cardiff Bay, CF10 4RU

20 Adelaide Street, Belfast, BT2 8GD

The GMC is a charity registered in England and Wales (1089278) and
Scotland (SC037750)

Unless otherwise expressly agreed by the sender of this email, this
communication may contain privileged or confidential information which is
exempt from disclosure under UK law. This email and its attachments may
not be used or disclosed except for the purpose for which it has been
sent.

If you are not the addressee or have received this email in error, please
do not read, print, re-transmit, store or act in reliance on it or any
attachments. Instead, please email the sender and then immediately delete
it.

General Medical Council

St James Building, 79 Oxford Street, Manchester, M1 6FQ

Regents Place, 350 Euston Road, London, NW1 3JN

The Tun, 4 Jacksons Entry, Holyrood Road, Edinburgh, EH8 8AE

Regus House, Falcon Drive, Cardiff Bay, CF10 4RU

20 Adelaide Street, Belfast, BT2 8GD

The GMC is a charity registered in England and Wales (1089278) and
Scotland (SC037750)

CASE 3 (part C)

Dear Mr Thackeray

Please find attached the transcripts of each of Dr Southall's hearings,
due to the size of the files I have to send these as separate e-mails.

Luke Smith

Office Administrator

GMC Adjudications

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CASE 3 (part B)

Dear Mr Thackeray

Please find attached the transcripts of each of Dr Southall's hearings,
due to the size of the files I have to send these as separate e-mails.

Luke Smith

Office Administrator

GMC Adjudications

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CASE 3 (part A)

Dear Mr Thackeray

Please find attached the transcripts of each of Dr Southall's hearings,
due to the size of the files I have to send these as separate e-mails.

Luke Smith

Office Administrator

GMC Adjudications

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CASE 2

Dear Mr Thackeray

Please find attached the transcripts of each of Dr Southall's hearings,
due to the size of the files I have to send these as separate e-mails.

Luke Smith

Office Administrator

GMC Adjudications

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CASE 1

Dear Mr Thackeray

Please find attached the transcripts of each of Dr Southall's hearings,
due to the size of the files I have to send these as separate e-mails.

Luke Smith

Office Administrator

GMC Adjudications

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Dear Mr Thackeray

I apologise for my continued delay in responding to you on this matter.
The delay has been caused by a combination of my current workload and
the complexities of this request. As you know you have two similar
requests with the Information Commissioner at the moment and I am
considering this one along with those. You will also be aware that Dr
Southall has been the subject of a number of hearings over the past few
years and therefore the amount of information for consideration is very
substantial.

Nevertheless, I expect to be in a position to respond to you on this
matter in this near future.

Yours sincerely

Julian Graves
Information Access Manager
General Medical Council

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Dear Mr Thackeray

Please find attached the final set of exhibits as per my recent email.

Yours sincerely

Julian Graves

Information Access Manager

General Medical Council

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Dear Mr Thackeray

Please accept my sincere apologies for the substantial delay in responding
to you on this matter. This has been caused by a combination of my heavy
workload and the complexities of the issue in hand.

As you are aware Dr Southall has been the subject of a number of hearings,
both Fitness to Practise Panel (FtP Panel) and their predecessor, the
Professional Conduct Committee (PCC). For ease of reference I have
therefore separated out my comments based on the exhibits of each of those
hearings. My views are as follows:

PCC - 7-15 June and 5-6 August 2004

Despite a comprehensive search, I am able to confirm, as per section
1(1)(a) of FOIA, that I have been unable to trace copies of the exhibits
used for this hearing. I am, however, able to provide you with a list of
the exhibits as per the attached. This information has been obtained from
a letter held within the papers identified.

FtP Panel - 23 July 2007

I have attached a redacted version of the exhibits list together with
those documents which I believe it is appropriate to disclose. I believe
that the remaining exhibits are exempt from the access provisions of the
FOIA by virtue of the following exemptions:

Section 40(2) by virtue of section 40(3)(a)(i) - We strongly believe that
disclosure of any of these documents would breach Principle 1 of the DPA.
The First Principle requires that personal data shall be processed 'fairly
and lawfully' and in order to legitimise the processing at least one of
the conditions in Schedule 2 of the DPA must be met. We consider the only
possible condition for processing as far as personal data is concerned in
this case would be likely to be Schedule 2(6)(1) which states that
'processing is necessary for the purposes of legitimate interests' and
does not prejudice the rights and freedoms or legitimate interests of the
data subject. However in this case we believe that this condition would
not apply. We do not believe that there is a strong public interest in the
disclosure of documents relating to this investigation where these have
not been placed into the public domain via the Panel hearing.

Section 41(1) - Information provided in confidence - This relates to
information supplied to the GMC by any person, the disclosure of which
would constitute a breach of confidence actionable by that or any other
person.

These exemptions are absolute, which means that they are not subject to a
public interest test (in order to assess if the public interest is greater
served by disclosing the information than maintaining the exemption).

FtP Panel - 13 November - 2 December 2006 and 5 November - 4 December
2007

I have attached a redacted version of the exhibits list together with
those documents which I believe it is appropriate to disclose to you. As
you are aware we have already provided you with copies of those exhibits
recorded as C23, D19 and D20 and I have therefore not included these
again. I believe that the remaining exhibits are exempt from the access
provisions of the FOIA by virtue of the exemptions referred to above.

FtP Panel - 8 May - 4 July 2008

I have attached a redacted version of the exhibits list together with
those documents which I believe it is appropriate to disclose to you. I
believe that the remaining exhibits are exempt from the access provisions
of the FOIA by virtue of the exemptions referred to above.

FtP Panel - 11 - 16 August and 20 - 21 September 2008

I will send separately a redacted version of the exhibits list together
with those documents which I believe it is appropriate to disclose to you.
I believe that the remaining exhibits are exempt from the access
provisions of the FOIA by virtue of the exemptions referred to above.

As you are aware, should you remain dissatisfied with my response on this
matter you do have a further right of complaint to the Information
Commissioner, the regulator of the FOIA. I believe you already have their
contact details.

Yours sincerely

Julian Graves
Information Access Manager
General Medical Council

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Dear Mr Thackeray

I'm afraid that in my email below, I inadvertently attached the wrong
hearing documents under cover of the PDF entitled "Exhibits - 8 May 2008".

I have attached the correct documents above.

Please accept my apologies for any inconvenience caused to you by my
error.

Yours sincerely

Julian Graves
Information Access Manager
General Medical Council

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