Meadow appeals against GMC bar

Professor Sir Roy Meadow will begin a High Court challenge tomorrow against a decision by the General Medical Council to strike him off.

The 72-year-old paediatrician was found guilty last July of serious professional misconduct over evidence he gave in the trial of Sally Clark, who was convicted but later cleared of murdering two of her babies. Sir Roy is appealing against the decision of the GMC and its punishment of removal from the medical register.

His lawyers are expected to argue at a three-day hearing in London before Mr Justice Collins that a GMC fitness to practise panel was wrong to conclude that what he did amounted to serious professional misconduct. They are also expected to contend that, in any event, removal from the register was too extreme a punishment.

The panel concluded he had "abused his position as a doctor" by giving misleading evidence in the Clark trial. It said the consequences of his errors "cannot be underestimated" and had "seriously undermined" the position of doctors giving evidence in trials.

The GMC said Sir Roy failed in his duty as an expert witness and was wrong to compare the possibility of Mrs Clark's two children dying of natural causes to the odds of horses winning the Grand National.

Mrs Clark was found guilty in 1999 of murdering her sons Christopher and Harry but had her conviction quashed on appeal in 2003. Sir Roy also gave evidence in two other high-profile child trials in which mothers were wrongfully convicted. Angela Cannings and Donna Anthony were jailed for murdering their children but later cleared by the Court of Appeal.