The disciplinary inquiry in question was held in relation to a medical practitioner (“W”) in public. The initial sentence for a warning letter to be served on W was substituted by an order that W’s name be removed from the General Register for a period of 1 month after the Council was alerted by the media that W did not have a clear record. In the written decision given by the Council on the same day, the Council stated that they would expect legal representatives of a defendant to be frank with the Council in respect of the defendant’s disciplinary record in the future.
Enquiries on the identity of members sitting at the inquiry, the Legal Adviser of the Council and the defence counsel were made by a member of the public (“N”) who is unconnected with the case. N did not explain his purpose of the inquiry despite being repeatedly asked by the Council. N then applied for judicial review to quash the Council’s decision in refusing to disclose the requested information (“the Decision”). The Council relied on the Data Protection Principle 3 (“the Principle”) in Schedule 1 of the Personal Data (Privacy) Ordinance (Cap. 486) (“the PDPO”) to restrict disclosure to N.
The Court of First Instance allowed N’s application and quashed the Decision. Godfrey Lam J found that the Council had irrelevantly taken into account the Principle in making the Decision and failed to consider the requirements of the principle of open justice, which if applicable, would invoke section 60B(a) of the PDPO for exemption to the Principle.
Godfrey Lam J in his obiter stated that the principle of open justice was not limited to physical access to the court room where a judicial hearing is taking place and applied to all tribunals exercising the judicial power of the state. The public interest in the administration of justice and the accountability of the judicial process required basic information about the identities of the key persons who have taken part in a public judicial hearing should normally be published. If the information was not disclosed in the written decision of the tribunal, then it should be disclosed upon inquiry made at a time reasonably close to the hearing.