The letter from the GOC, Optician 08.03.19, confirms the points made in my letter, Optician 01.03.09.
- The GOC cannot differentiate between an optometrist’s statutory requirements for registration and the GOC’s statutory obligations as a regulatory body.
- It espouses the questionably ethical stance that the ‘end justifies the means’.
- The information contained in the GOC survey is not a requirement for registration.
This is now the fifth time I have informed the GOC that it is not the subject matter of its survey that is the pertinent issue about which I have written, but rather its insistence that registrants compulsorily engage with any survey before they can register, effectively creating an impediment to their legal right to so register; this lack of comprehension defies belief, and is responsible for an enforcement that is, I suggest, questionably legal.
Any organisation, particularly a statutory body, that so undermines its core function simultaneously undermines its authority, bringing both it, and its function, into disrepute.
That the GOC should so wish to compromise its position as a result of its inability to differentiate one issue from another, brings the intellectual calibre of the organisation seriously into question, and as a consequence, its ability to plan, create, administer, or adjudicate on all, or any, issues effecting the regulation of optometrists.
It is patently evident from the GOC’s letter, and from previous correspondence, that its dogged pursuit of this narrow agenda, at any cost, highlights its unwillingness to consider, and consequent inability to comprehend, the serious issue at the nub of this correspondence.
This is the organisation that sits in judgment over the legal right of optometrists to earn a living, or not, and were it not so serious, it would provoke the mirth that is the preserve of the incredulous.
PS: If some members of staff are analysing data, data that might be deemed pertinent to other staff members who make decisions about registration and CET or FTP, then, by inference, that data is not anonymous.