Health Secretary condemns GMC for ‘failing publicly and abysmally’ on antisemitism

Health Secretary Wes Streeting will “haul in the GMC’s chief executive and chair” to explain why the public body is “failing publicly and abysmally in their responsibility to protect Jewish patients”.

In a fiery speech at a joint summit on antisemitism in the health sector on Tuesday, hosted by the APPG on antisemitism and The Office of HM Government’s Independent advisor on antisemitism, Lord Mann, Streeting cited “cases of medics who’ve said things that would make me feel uncomfortable [to be] treated by those medics and even unsafe being treated by the[m] and I am not Jewish.

“There are cases that our country’s medical regulator should be taking seriously, and they should be taking all steps necessary to keep patients safe and I do not see the evidence that this is the case.”

In his address, Streeting cited the Jewish community’s long history of service within the NHS, as well as the Board of Deputies’ newly published Commission on Antisemitism, which was co-chaired by Lord Mann and Penny Mordaunt, the former Defence Secretary. The health secretary described the report as “pretty sobering reading.

“It concludes that antisemitism has crept into our country’s civil society in a way that hasn’t happened before, including our National Health Service.

“When the Board of Deputies identifies a specific, unaddressed issue of antisemitism in the NHS, I take that finding with the utmost seriousness.”

The Health Secretary’s comments also came as Jewish News published two separate stories providing examples of NHS doctors engaging in repeated comments about “Jewish supremacy”, explicitly rejecting the idea of making a distinction between Zionism and Judaism – to little long-term effect.

The GMC is understood to have opened a case into Dr Rahmeh Aladwan, a member of Palestine Action before it was proscribed as a terrorist organisation earlier this month, last year, but subsequently closed the case, saying it did not meet the required threshold. The organisation then opened another investigation into her earlier this year, but that, despite social comments from Aladwan about “Jewish schools” in Britain and how “the UK is occupied and controlled by Jewish supremacy”, no further action has yet been taken.

Last night, the Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service lifted the interim suspension of Dr Rehiana Ali, who has a history of spreading conspiracy theories about Jews and talking about “Jewish extremism”. The MPTS appeared to accept Ali’s claim during her hearing that she was speaking “about Israel and Israelis”, despite considerable evidence to the contrary, including the sharing of the false conspiracy theory that “4,000 Jews did not show up to work” on 9/11 and an attempt to ask whether Richard Nixon’s identification of a number of people as Jewish in White House tape recordings “explained” the Watergate scandal which led to his resignation. Ali also shared a claim that “Judaism is the only religion in human history whose religious texts (e.g., Mishneh Torah) literally prescribe a sacred command to kill every Christian on earth”, with her own statement above the claim saying “I think people need to address jewish extremism especially Christians.”  In this case, the MPTS panel reached its conclusion despite the GMC supporting the continuation of the interim suspension, which was in place while the organisation investigated the reports into Ali’s conduct.

In his remarks, Streeting said he was “extremely concerned that we’ve now seen multiple instances when blatant antisemitism from NHS doctors is going unaddressed.

“There have been cases of medics who’ve said things that would make me feel uncomfortable, treated by those medics and even unsafe being treated by the and I am not Jewish.

“There are cases that our country’s medical regulator should be taking seriously, and they should be taking all steps necessary to keep patients safe and I do not see the evidence that this is the case.

“So in that spirit, I’ll be hauling in the GMC’s chief executive and chair to give them that message directly and to get an account from the GMC as to why they are failing so publicly and abysmally in their responsibility to protect Jewish staff and Jewish patients, because an injury to one is an injury to all and unless we are keeping everyone safe, we cannot guarantee we are keeping anyone safe.”

The Health Secretary, who has been serving in the role since Labour’s victory in last year’s general election, also addressed claims that legal issues prevented such cases being dealt with effectively.

“I gather there are excuses that the legal bar isn’t in the right place”, he said, but pointed out that “no one’s been knocking at my door from the regulators to tell me that the regulation is in the wrong place… So forgive me if these sound like miserable excuses from the regulator, and I just I cannot understand how there have been so many high-profile cases where the GMC doesn’t take action and then people are out there flouting publicly the fact that the GMC has not taken action.

“I think it is a shameful and sorry state of affairs that GMC need to account for. This goes for other regulators too.

“I’m frankly sick and tired as the person who has a responsibility to the public, as a democratically elected representative of the people, of being told by the people who are charged with regulating a life and death service, that it’s all too complicated and all too difficult.”

According to statistics from the GMC which Jewish News has obtained, 454 complaints of antisemitism have been submitted to the organisation since 7 October 2023, about 123 individual doctors and a further 18 unidentified doctors.

Of those submissions, 84%, or 383, were closed at the triage stage, although Jewish News understands that this is in line with the percentage of general complaints against doctors closed at an early stage of proceedings. Jewish News also understands that while there are cases where a number of complaints are made about a single doctor, if the complaint progresses to a full investigation, the initial complaints would then be considered under a single investigation.

Jewish News further understands that the Jewish Medical Association (JMA) submits certain complaints about doctors engaging in antisemitism to the GMC. The JMA brings substantial experience to this task, with all cases undergoing internal triage before the Jewish organisation submits them to the GMC. Despite that experience and care, approximately half of the cases the JMA brings to the GMC are closed by the latter at the first possible stage, which the JMA sees as disappointing. The cases which are not dismissed out of hand by the GMC, however, still spend many months and not uncommonly years at the organisation’s investigation stage, with the doctors in question continuing in unrestricted practice during that time.

The Health Secretary continued his speech by saying: “I’m not going to allow independence of regulators or complexity of regulation or other excuses to stand in the way of tackling this problem if we need stronger laws and stronger regulation.

“Well, they’re my favourite problems to solve because they don’t cost money and we’ve got a majority to get things through Parliament.”

Streeting also referenced these discussions “taking place against the backdrop of the war in Gaza and Israel’s conduct in the West Bank and the appalling atrocities of 7 October.”

He said he was “not interested in silencing criticism of this government, criticism of the Israeli government or any other government. I’m not interested in silencing the political views of NHS staff.

“But what I do expect is that NHS staff show the same professional standards in the workplace that I would expect of them, that they would expect of me, that they show the same professional conduct outside of the workplace as well and think really carefully about whether their words and their actions would make their patients feel more safe or less safe.

“Because it is a special responsibility working in our National Health Service. It is a life and death service and so we have a responsibility to make sure that everyone in the NHS feels safe.

“And if we can’t do it in the NHS, then I really wonder where we’ll be as wider society.”