Competing interests: GMC rejects calls to establish central register for doctors

The UK General Medical Council has rejected calls for it to set up a central register of doctors’ declared interests, saying that it lacked the legal power to enforce such a move and arguing that conflicts were much better managed at a local level.

However, the GMC said that it supported moves by some NHS trusts to establish publicly available registers on which doctors must declare their interests and added that it would be willing to discuss how to roll these out more widely and extend them to GPs.

Last month 11 senior doctors wrote to the GMC’s chair, Clare Marx, urging the regulator to establish a central register to improve transparency.1 …