My timing is probably not the best: a few days before Channel 4 had broadcast the Dispatches documentary, “Can you Trust you’re Doctor?” After sending in undercover reporters to GPs’ surgeries so that they could fail to be diagnosed with various life-threatening conditions and highlighting several genuine cases of misdiagnosis with predictably tragic consequences, there was a fleeting shot of Dame Janet Smith bemoaning the lack of an independent adjudicatory body before Jon Snow was shown interviewing a rather cautious Niall Dickson resolutely picking his way through the points being put and not giving much away. Neither Snow nor Dickson seemed to have much relish for the discussion. It was difficult, Dickson said, for the GMC to investigate poor clinical practice unless the case was referred to the GMC. Patient protection, he emphasised, was what the regulatory process was about, not the punishment of erring doctors.