Philipp Bonhoeffer, former head of cardiology at Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children in London, will not appear or defend himself at a Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service (MPTS) hearing into allegations of sexual impropriety with boys in Kenya, it has emerged.

Bonhoeffer has snubbed the hearing, due to start in Manchester on 3 September before the new MPTS, which has taken over the role of the General Medical Council’s fitness to practise panels. He has instructed his lawyers to take no further part in the case brought against him by the GMC.

The allegations concern periods that Bonhoeffer, described by the GMC as “an internationally renowned paediatric cardiologist,” spent in Kenya with the Chain of …