A Scottish court's decision to overturn a ruling by the General Pharmaceutical Council (GPhC) to strike off a pharmacist could affect how the profession is regulated, a leading healthcare lawyer has said.

Three senior Scottish judges concluded that a GPhC fitness-to-practise committee was wrong to have struck off a pharmacist because of his conviction for assaulting his wife. The committee should instead have imposed a 12-month suspension, which could be reviewed at the end of that period to decide if it should be extended, the judges ruled in July.

David Reissner, senior healthcare partner at law firm Charles Russell LLP, told C+D that the court's decision - which the GPhC is appealing - had effectively given the regulator an "additional sanction" to use against pharmacists.

If the GPhC's appeal was unsuccessful, it would put the regulator in a "difficult position" because it would be harder to justify why a pharmacist deserved to be struck off rather than suspended indefinitely, Mr Reissner said on Friday (September 5).

"If I'm representing a pharmacist at a committee [hearing] next week and they decide my client's fitness to practise is impaired, I could say they should consider a suspension of a longer period [than 12 months]," Mr Reissner said. 

It was "very difficult" to make this sanction workable, as a committee that assessed the case after the initial 12-month period would not be legally bound to follow any recommendations its predecessor had made about whether the sanction should be extended.

The GPhC confirmed it had lodged an appeal with the Supreme Court last month, but said it was unable to comment further while legal action was ongoing.

Under the Pharmacy Order 2010, a fitness-to-practise committee can issue a pharmacist with a warning, suspend them for up to a year, place conditions on their registration for up to three years or strike them off the register.

In this case, the committee had ruled that suspending the pharmacist for 12 months was "insufficient to mark the degree of seriousness of his conduct".

But the judges at the Scottish Court of Session - the country's supreme civil court - said that although the GPhC's ability to suspend a pharmacist was restricted to a 12-month period, the committee was able to extend this for further 12-month periods "successively on more than one occasion if this was considered appropriate".

The GPhC had "failed to have proper regard" for this "middle way", the judges said. They noted the pharmacist had made "serious efforts" to rehabilitate himself and ruled to "quash" the committee's decision.

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