BMA Judicial Review

BMA decides to judicially review the GMC decision to withdraw the age exemption for payment of the annual retention fee for doctors who are 65 or over.

The BMA has decided to judicially review the decision of Council made on 22 May 2008 to withdraw the age exemption for payment of the annual retention fee for doctors who are 65 or over.

As part of its application the BMA asked for the matter to be expedited and for the permission application and the substantive matter to be dealt with at a single hearing. The Court directed that this should be the case and that any work to progress the decision to remove the age exemption should be stayed until the matter has been resolved at a substantive hearing.

As such, we have put on hold steps to implement the decision of Council in this regard until the substantive hearing. This means that we will not be taking any further steps to process any applications we receive for voluntary erasure, set up Direct Debit instructions or process ARF payments, where these have been received from doctors affected by the review.

The date for this hearing has been set for 1 October 2008.

We have written to all affected doctors to this effect and we will write to them again when judgement has been given.