Social services will always move fast when they are considering a child's risks. To do otherwise would be negligent. It is better to remove and return than wait and find an abused or neglected child or worse. The authorities have been burned enough in recent years (Baby P etc).
However, to find yourself on the wrong end of this must be distressing and I have a lot of sympathy for anyone who does - I cannot imagine what that would be like.
But I also find the story, as told, odd. For the judge to grant the order it suggests that there is more to this than meets the eye. It can't simply be 'lack of access to a GP' surely because the answer to that is relatively easy - it is not the mother that needs GP registration for the child's welfare - but the child and the child is a british citizen! (s)he can simply register with the father's GP and bingo. So I suspect there are other factors here at play.
There is more information on hearings here:
http://www.scra.gov.uk/children_s_heari ... stions.cfm
(I assume your friends are in scotland)
I wish your friends luck.