GMC chief executive Niall Dickson said the introduction of revalidation is not dependent on having an effective remediation system in place.

The GPC said last month that it cannot support the current plans for revalidation as there are still ‘enormous holes’ in the process around how remediation will work and how sessional GPs will take part in revalidation.

GPC chairman Dr Laurence Buckman said these issues must be resolved before revalidation can go ahead.

But Mr Dickson said you cannot make an argument that revalidation is dependent on remediation.

He said: ‘If the argument is that revalidation might identify patient safety issues but you haven’t got a good enough thing in place to remediate the doctor, I would say: "Well not identifying a patient safety issue is not the way forward".’

Mr Dickson added that the GMC is ‘on track’ for revalidation to begin in late 2012, although he admitted there are ‘quite a few hurdles to jump over’ before then.

He said in the coming weeks the GMC will be writing to doctors to issue a ‘wake up call’ that revalidation is about to happen.

He said: ‘We will be communicating with doctors on a regular basis throughout 2012, so people are in no doubt about what they need to do in order to get themselves prepared for this process.

‘We now need to engage doctors themselves in this process so they are absolutely aware of what is required.’