DOCTORS must not be tied up in bureaucracy because of mass murderer Harold Shipman, according to a Swindon GP.

Dr Peter Swinyard, of the Phoenix Surgery in Toothill, said that any legislation based on the idea that all doctors were potential murderers would make it impossible for doctors to do their job.

His comments came after the final report from the Shipman Inquiry was published.

"We have got to remember that hard cases make bad law," said Dr Swinyard, who is the local spokesman for the British Medical Association.

"Shipman was a very hard case, he was a serial killer. Whatever field he had gone into I think he would have been a mass murderer.

"Because a mass murderer happens to have been a doctor doesn't mean all doctors are mass murderers. If you legislate on that basis you will tie the medical profession in so many hoops of bureaucracy and have so little trust that you will make it quite impossible for a doctor to do their job properly.

"We have to remember that patients come first but we need doctors who are able to do their jobs."

The sixth and final report from the inquiry, looking at Shipman's early career, said that he had killed up to 15 patients while working as a junior doctor in Pontefract, West Yorkshire.

But Dr Swinyard said that conditions were not the same then.

"Shipman was a junior doctor in the 1970s when things were very different," he said. "Juniors are much more closely supervised now.

"It is highly unlikely that a junior doctor now would have access to

controlled drugs without a senior doctor supervising so the chances of a junior doctor being able to give a lethal injection are remote in the

extreme."

Swindon Primary Care Trust said it had put a variety of measures in place to comply with all the recommendations from the Shipman Inquiry reports.

Heather Mitchell, corporate performance director, said: "Swindon PCT has put in place robust Risk Manage-ment and Clinical Governance arrangements and, through these mechanisms, has reviewed previous recommendations and arranged to review existing processes.

"This will ensure compliance with all the reports now published.

"The PCT also has in place a system which allows staff to alert management to incidents in a no blame culture.

"This is supported by a whistle blowing policy which allows incidents and concerns to be reported in confidence."

Isabel Field