High court confirms Ghosh direction not needed in all cases

Posted on November 30, 2016 by Jeremy Barnett

The High Court has recently confirmed that the Ghosh dCirection need not be given in all regulatory cases involving dishonesty. The rule was set out by Mr Justice Singh in Uddin v GMC and reaffirmed in George v NMC this week. Nichol J confirmed that the advice given by the Legal Assessor that the defence did not involve the registrant saying ‘I did not regard what I was doing would be regarded as honest by honest and reasonable nurses’ was correct on the facts of this case.

There has been a great deal of judicial discussion around the use of the Ghosh test in regulatory proceedings – see for example Mostyn J in Kirshner v GDC and Edis J in Dowson v GMC but many pannelists are still under the mistaken belief that this is the standard direction in all cases.

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