Legal threat over surgeon blunder

Victims' groups are angry about the GMC's role

Former patients of a disgraced surgeon say they will sue the General Medical Council after learning of mistakes which allowed him to work in the UK.

The GMC admitted in a private hearing that Canadian authorities had told them in 1985 that Richard Neale had been struck off there for malpractice.

However, the surgeon was allowed to carry on working in Yorkshire for well over a decade.

Hundreds of women say that he left them maimed after botched operations.

Now a 300-strong support group is planning to sue the GMC over its failure to notice that Neale was employed in the UK, at the Friarage Hospital in Northallerton.

It told an inquiry on Wednesday that while its Canadian counterpart passed on a warning about him in the 1980s, it did not realise that he had already moved to the UK.

Stop list

Instead, the GMC put the name on a "stop list" designed to alert them if he had arrived in the UK subsequently and applied for permission to work.

It was not until 2000 that he was found guilty of 34 charges of incompetence and bad practice relating to 12 women and struck off by the GMC.

Many of them told the GMC how they had been left in permanent pain following botched operations.

Graham Maloney, who runs a support group for more than 300 women who claim they have been damaged by Neale, said that he was surprised it had taken the GMC so long to admit the nature of the error.

He told BBC News Online: "It has taken so much effort to get the truth out about this.

"The GMC is meant to be protecting its patients but it just isn't doing that.

"Now we are taking legal advice on whether we can sue the GMC for their incompetence."

No connection

A spokesman for the GMC confirmed that it had told the inquiry about the blunder.

A spokesman said: "It appears that while we did receive notification from the Canadian authorities that they had struck off a Dr Neale, we didn't connect it with the same Dr Neale on our register.

"It was treated as relating to someone who may be planning to join the register as the notification did not state Dr Neale had UK qualifications and was registered with us."

She refused to comment further on the GMC evidence to the inquiry on the grounds of confidentiality.