Harold Shipman is believed to have killed at least 215 patients

The inquiry was set up in 2001 after the conviction of GP Harold Shipman to look at how patients could be protected from such events occurring again.

This report will spell out changes the inquiry team think are still needed to the way GPs are regulated.

But the GMC says it has already made wholesale changes to the way it works.

We need to know a lot more about doctors and their past records, so that we can decide for ourselves whether to go to them or not Joyce Robbins, Patient Concern

The report, the fifth the inquiry team has produced, will look specifically at what happened in Shipman's own case.

It will focus on his conviction of dishonestly obtaining pethidine in 1976 while working as a GP in Todmorden, West Yorkshire.

The GMC's Penal Cases Committee sent the GP a warning letter at the time, rather than refer the case to its Disciplinary Committee.

The inquiry, led by Dame Janet Smith, will also make proposals for changes it thinks are still needed, in areas such as how GPs are monitored and disciplined, ensuring doctors' past history - including criminal convictions - is disclosed to potential employers, and improvements to the complaints system.

'Secretive'

The GMC is in the process of reforming the way it regulates doctors and how it deals with complaints, and says things have changed substantially since the 1970s.

A new system of revalidation - which will invovle regularly checking doctors competency to practise - is currently being finalised.

And it says it is confident that "another Shipman" could not happen now.

Joyce Robins, co-director of Patient Concern, said: "The problem is you can't legislate against a mad-man. Shipman falsified data and received glowing reports from colleagues.

"But there are a number of doctors harming patients through incompetence or laziness. Those are the people we really want to catch."

She added: "The GMC has improved, but it is still tremendously secretive. There is a need for more openness:

"We need to know a lot more about doctors and their past records, so that we can decide for ourselves whether to go to them or not."

Too much regulation

The NHS Alliance, which represents primary care, said it was vital that no other doctor was allowed to get away with crimes in the way that Shipman did.

But it also stressed that patient safety in Britain is amongst the best in the world.

Spokesman Dr Graham Archard said: "We must not assume every GP is potentially the patient's enemy.

"Patient care could be compromised if doctors have to spend even more time on forms and bureaucracy.

"We have now reached the absolute limit of what is feasible. Additional regulation could take time away from treating patients to the extent that patient care is actually damaged."

Harold Shipman was convicted of 15 murders in 2000. But Dame Janet's inquiry concluded it was likely he had killed at least 200 more patients during his career.

The former Hyde GP was found hanged in his cell in Wakefield Prison in January this year.