Expert medical witnesses face court shake-up

LONDON, Oct 31: The use of expert medical witnesses in courts is to be overhauled with a centralised system arranged through the National Health Service, the government's Chief Medical Officer said has said.

The changes have been prompted by the cases of several women who were wrongly convicted of murdering their babies on the evidence of experts such as paediatrician Sir Roy Meadow.

''These are tragic and very complex cases,'' Liam Donaldson told BBC radio yesterday.

But he said he had not found widespread problems in a review of 28,000 children's care order cases.

''When you look at the overall volume of 10,000 children's public law cases a year dealt with in England and Wales, the proportion in which there is disputed evidence, let alone allegations of miscarriage of justice is very small.

He said the main problem he had found was the future supply of medical experts.

''It's something that younger doctors don't want to go into, for a whole variety of reasons including the very intimidating atmosphere that they perceive now surrounds this.'' Despite their reluctance, Donaldson said doctors had a ''public duty'' to appear in courts.

Under his plans, teams of doctors would be organised through the NHS to provide evidence in cases involving children.

This would replace the current system of individual arrangements between a limited number of solicitors and doctors prepared to come to court.

''What we want to see is high quality competent medical experts,'' he said, adding that he was not criticising existing experts.

''The problem is there is a relatively small number of people doing it and all of the work falls into a small number of hands.'' He said this shortage of available expert witnesses also lead to bottlenecks and delays in the legal system.

Better witness training for junior doctors and widening the pool of available experts would ''make sure we don't encounter situations as we have in the past with the quality of evidence.'' Meadow was an expert witness in the trials of Sally Clark, Angela Cannings and Donna Anthony, who were all freed by the Court of Appeal after serving years in prison.

Clark had been convicted in 1999 for the murder of her two sons after Meadow told the jury there was a ''one in 73 million'' chance of two children dying from cot deaths in an affluent family.

Last week, in an Appeal Court judgement relating to Meadow's case, the General Medical Council won a legal battle over its right to discipline expert witnesses.

REUTERS