The doctors’ regulator is “failing abysmally to protect Jewish patients”, Wes Streeting has said.
The Health Secretary said he would be “hauling in” the General Medical Council’s (GMC) leaders to explain themselves, during a Government summit on anti-Semitism in the health sector on Tuesday.
Mr Streeting said the regulator’s chief executive and chairman would need to explain “why they are failing so publicly and abysmally in their responsibility to protect Jewish staff and Jewish patients”.
The summit was hosted by the All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on anti-Semitism and Lord Mann, the Government’s independent adviser on Anti-Semitism.
In a speech, first reported by Jewish News, Mr Streeting said there had been “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.”
He said the Board of Deputies’ newly published Commission on Anti-Semitism, which was co-chaired by Lord Mann and Penny Mordaunt, the former defence secretary, had made for “pretty sobering reading”.
“It concludes that anti-Semitism has crept into our country’s civil society in a way that hasn’t happened before, including our National Health Service,” he said, adding that he takes that finding “with the utmost seriousness”.
He said he just “cannot understand how there have been so many high-profile cases where the GMC doesn’t take action” and that it was a “shameful and sorry state of affairs”.
“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,” he said.
There have been 454 complaints of antis-Semitism made to the GMC about 131 doctors, data released to Jewish News found.
A number of doctors have been allowed to continue practising medicine or working for the NHS, either by the GMC or its independent tribunal, despite allegations of anti-Semitism, and in the face of attempted crackdowns by Mr Streeting and his predecessor, the former Tory health secretary, Victoria Atkins.
The GMC cannot suspend or strike doctors off the register itself, but refers cases it believes warranting such action to an independent tribunal.
Dr Wahid Shaida, who ran the Islamist extremist group Hizb ut-Tahrir until its ban last year, never lost his licence to practice, despite being revealed as the group’s UK leader when it emerged that he celebrated the Oct 7 massacre by Hamas as a “very welcome punch on the nose” to Israel.