Office of Judicial Complaints " Sir Scott Baker made an unfortunate mistake of the sort almost every judge, however conscientious, occasionally makes"

"It is understood why you took offence and Sir Scott Baker has apologised for his inadvertent mistake" OJC July 2010

Previously, on Ward 87 [ I have to really write this like a Soap Opera"], I went to court to seek justice not only for me but for a number of doctors who keep facing different tests of misconduct at the GMC. I came out of the court room having had my name changed. It had been changed overnight to "Dr Patel". Immediately, I wrote to the court. No response. Then that is nothing new :).

These days, you don't need Deedpoll. What you need to do is step into a Court room in the UK. The judge then changes your name immediately to the usual stereotypical name used for all Asian doctors.Better still, all ethnic minority doctors need to just line up at the Deedpoll office and automatically become Gujarati with the name Dr Patel before setting foot in any court in the UK.  Automatically, you rename your mum as Mummy Patel, your dad as Daddy Patel, your Goldfish as Sharky Patel  and so forth.

It then takes you 8 months to ensure the judge corrects your name within the judgement.  Actually, it takes the court 8 months to cough up the judgment. They only do so after clearing the judge :). I went to the Office of Judicial Complaints, not to win but for an admission from them that I had been referred to as Dr Patel. I obtained that and have been laughing all the way to the chocolate box :) ever since. In this world, you either watch Monte Python for a good laugh or you play with the judicial authorities. I play with the authorities when I am really bored. Indeed, I test the system out to see how effective it is. The OJC is generally pretty poor really.

The beauty of playing with the judicial authorities is that you start to understand the way they work. In the upper echelons of power, what is said is often not what is done. It is acutely important for any asian doctor facing the courts to understand this before setting foot there. Equality is only meant for speeches. In reality, there is no equality at all.

Lord Chief Justice Lord Judge once exclaimed "In the eyes of the law we are all equal". This was in one of a number of speeches given at the Equality in Justice Day. Lord Philips went onto say

"When we are appointed we take an oath or affirmation that we will administer justice ‘to do right to all manner of people after the laws and usages of this realm’. We act in accordance with that oath. We treat equally all who come before us, regardless of whether they are men or women, regardless of their race or religion and whether they are rich or poor"

And he continues

"So I can give you this assurance. Any man or woman who appears before a judge in this country will receive equal treatment in the administration of the law. The judge will treat each litigant in the same way. But the judge’s duty is to apply the law, whether he agrees with the law or not. So the important question is not ‘does the judge treat everyone equally?’ but ‘does the law treat everyone equally?’ In any society the answer to that question depends upon the motives, the beliefs, the attitudes, the prejudices or lack of prejudices of those who make the law"

Anyhow, for everyone's entertainment, here is the extract of the OJC letter by Sir Scott Baker.[See below] As we can see, Scott Baker is squealing away/slithering away and getting his fellow judges to support him.  It helps to have friends in high places. Of course, the bottom-line here is we can understand why Mohammed Al Fayed [ or would that be Mohammed Al Patel according to Sir Scott Baker] had no chance of success in the Diana Inquest. 

Please note below, Scott Baker made the same mistake 4 times and was unable to read my name on 120 sheets of paper in front of him. Now that is what we call UK justice :). Instead of taking the blame on himself, he went onto blame one of the junior members of his profession. This is called "passing the buck". Secondly, the fact is he couldn't be bothered to be accurate about the claimants' name. He then multiplied the complaints originally against me by 4 showing us all exactly how much attention he really paid to the papers in front of him. He then spent the vast majority of time denying that the GMC had a database to record doctors Fitness to Practise histories. Anyhow, this as we can all see is the quality of justice in the United Kingdom. Moreover, as the icing on the cake, all junior doctors get a "retired judge" while Liam Donaldson gets a Lord Justice and a Justice. This is what the court calls "Equality".

Anyhow, I shall leave this to the audience to assess whether this is an inadvertent mistake or a racist one :). It would be a bit like calling someone a "Paki" and calling it a " unfortunate mistake" due to the similarity to "Pakistani". There is one fabulous thing about being a judge, while they are unaccountable and are paid in excess of £192,000 per year, they are of the view that the public actually respect the work they do :).At some point, I must run a petition to reduce their salary down by half. No reason the tax payer should fund this kind of slip shod behaviour. 

Anyhow, Sir Scott Baker once stated that there was no prejudice to a doctor to have a closed complaint. I am only following his judgment when I feature it here :). Complaints against judges are a secret. The public can officially accept that Dr Rita Pal made a formal complaint of behaviour contrary to the Race Relations Act against Sir Scott Baker, he was cleared much like I was with the GMC. The feature online thus causes him no prejudice at all. No member of the public could reasonably even think that Sir Scott Baker may well have a attitude contrary to the Race Relations Act. No one could even speculate upon the issue or hold the view that he could just be a racist pompous member of the judiciary [ technically now retired]. Of course, why I wasn't mistaken for Dr Pelling or any other name is beyond me. After this, every ethnic minority person would have the confidence that this judge is not racist :) [ I am only repeating the judges own judgment about doctors who apparently suffer no prejudice following closed complaints].

We can treat this like the judicial fitness to practise history and database . A bit like the one possessed by the GMC. For the record, the GMC denied the existence of a database collecting a doctor's fitness to practise history [negative or positive findings]. Scott Baker  denied the existence of a database. The FOIA request from the GMC sent to my colleague confirmed the existence of this database :). All good answers to dishonesties in court come swiftly to those who wait.

Anyhow, please review the extract below :). Excellent admission as I had the tape recordings first :). Of course, I really want to know how many mistakes a judge is allowed to make before he really is perceived as an idiot.

July 2010. OJC to Dr Rita Pal :).

"There is no dispute that Sir Scott Baker referred to you as ‘Dr Patel’. When he was contacted for permission for officials to request the court recording (an entirely routine courtesy) he immediately gave permission, but also took the opportunity to say that, without at that stage having recourse to the transcript, if he had referred to you as Dr Patel, then he was extremely sorry for his oversight and he gave his assurance that he had intended no offence. He observed that he would have expected your counsel to bring this to his attention at the time. If this had been done it would have afforded him an immediate opportunity to correct the court record and apologise directly to you.

It is clearly a sensitive matter to refer to anyone by the wrong name and perhaps particularly so if there can be racial or other associations. It is understood why you took offence and Sir Scott Baker has apologised for his inadvertent mistake.

There is no evidence that in referring to you as ‘Dr Patel’ for a short time on four occasions Sir Scott Baker was deliberately seeking to offend. For the remainder of the hearing he referred to you by your correct name. On the evidence available, Sir Scott Baker made an unfortunate mistake of the sort almost every judge, however conscientious, occasionally makes. When drawn to his attention he has immediately apologised.

It is an unfortunate and regrettable slip. If you or your counsel had brought his mistake to his attention at the time he would have been able to apologise to you directly. He has now done so. It is not, however, a matter of judicial misconduct"