CITIZENS appalled by governing body overreach have joined a campaign to hold the General Medical Council (GMC) and Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) to account. The group have written more than 1,000 letters supporting Dr Sam White and solicitor Lois Bayliss, who spoke out against the official Covid narrative. The main thrust of the complaints is that regulation has been replaced by censorship, and that bodies overseeing doctors and solicitors strive to punish dissenters for simply challenging the government.
A lawyer who prefers to remain anonymous and runs the campaign called Ethical Approach said: ‘Doctors and lawyers speaking out were being investigated, harassed and pursued, and accused of peddling misinformation. The GMC in particular is operating double standards, as pro-narrative doctors who stated incorrect facts were left alone. For example, Dr Hilary Jones, who followed the narrative but got facts wrong, had no sanctions.
‘We are talking about an experimental vaccine that we have no long-term studies for, so how did the GMC know what Hilary Jones was saying was not misinformation? How did they know doctors raising questions about the narrative were guilty of misinformation? They couldn’t have known.’
Dr Jones, a pundit on ITV’s Good Morning Britain and Lorraine, was twice reported to the broadcast regulator Ofcom for inaccurate Covid comments, and subsequently to the GMC, which decided not to investigate. Ofcom received nearly 4,000 complaints after he gave wrong information, later corrected by ITV, about the proportion of unvaccinated Covid patients in hospital; and nearly 100 complaints after he lambasted Steve James, an ICU consultant at King’s College Hospital, London, who refused Covid vaccination as he said he had acquired natural immunity.
Ethical Approach said: ‘This doesn’t indicate that the GMC are independent regulators as they should be according to our regulatory legislation. They’re biased, and that flies in the face of principles of regulation.’
GMC guidance says that if doctors have a concern for patient safety they must raise it. Many doctors challenged mask-wearing and the experimental Covid vaccinations.
Two doctors amongst a number pursued by the GMC are Dr White, who was a GP partner at a Hampshire practice, and consultant surgeon Mohammad Adil who had a 30-year career. Both were suspended for raising concerns about Covid restrictions and vaccinations. Their suspension automatically triggered a GMC investigation and temporarily ended their ability to earn a living. Mr Adil has three children and a family to support and subsequently moved to Pakistan. Dr White crowdfunded to live and to help fight his case. Their suspensions have been lifted but the damage was done: their reputations in tatters, they are now considered unemployable by the NHS although have both forged alternative health careers.
Dr White’s case was cleared in the High Court. His victory was uploaded to the Courts and Tribunals Judiciary website but has since been removed ‘at the discretion of a judge’. This means solicitors supporting sanctioned doctors cannot read the ruling to gain insight.
Despite winning his case Dr White said: ‘The GMC continue to harass me. They claim I am bringing the profession into disrepute but their good medical practice guidelines for doctors say that “you should take prompt action if you think patient safety is being compromised”.’
Many of his concerns have since been supported by mainstream media doctors. Mail on Sunday columnist Dr Ellie Cannon promoted face masks but has now concluded they were ‘probably pointless’.
Coroners’ courts confirm many deaths from Covid vaccination side-effects. A high-profile case is that of BBC Radio Newcastle presenter Lisa Shaw, 44, who the coroner said died as a result of her first AstraZeneca vaccine. Her husband plans to sue AZ.
Dame Janet Smith, a barrister and former High Court judge, has been scathing of the GMC’s conduct in the past. She headed the inquiry into Harold Shipman, the GP who became Britain’s most prolific serial killer, murdering around 250 patients.
In 2004, she published six reports detailing missed opportunities to stop Shipman. In her fifth report, she blamed the GMC for ‘doing too little to protect patients’. She concluded: ‘Expediency replaced principle.’
In 2005, she was asked to review recommendations she had made for GMC reform. She concluded: ‘The leopard has not changed its spots.’
She is not the only high-profile establishment figure to speak out against the GMC. In 2006 their former president Sir Donald Irvine called for the Council to be disbanded and re-formed. Former Chief Medical Officer Sir Liam Donaldson said complaints were dealt with in a haphazard manner, and that the GMC caused distress to doctors over trivial complaints while tolerating poor practice in other cases. He accused the GMC of being ‘secretive, tolerant of sub-standard practice and dominated by the professional interest, rather than that of the patient’.
Ethical Approach know 13 doctors who have suffered harassment on the back of uninvestigated complaints. ‘The regulators seem to do very little to check out the credibility of the complainant or the complaint,’ they said. ‘Complaints have been made by other doctors, members of the public, but also governing bodies. You can’t see which governing bodies, but it could be the Department of Health and Social Care or the UK Health Security Agency, all of whom would want to cover up any mistakes. I’ve personally seen no complaints from patients.’
Former GP Dr Sarah Myhill, now Clinical Director at the College of Naturopathy, London, has survived a record 38 GMC investigations for using vitamins to treat patients, and has another five pending. She agrees: ‘One of the complaints against me was from an internet troll who signed himself, “Those who live in glass houses should masturbate in the basement”. The GMC accepted this as professional language and his complaints were progressed.’
Ethical Approach point out that solicitors (as well as doctors) have a professional duty to challenge. ‘Take any example of a legal case that ends up in court, it’s always a challenge,’ they said. ‘The regulators seem to have taken an approach that they believe that the government are unchallengeable on any matter.’
Lois Bayliss, from Broad Yorkshire Law, South Yorkshire, is one of a number of solicitors being investigated by the SRA for alleged anti-Covid rhetoric. Ms Bayliss, who has no social media accounts, has been assisting members of the public on a pro bono basis for two years. Cases include supporting the carers of vulnerable adults who do not want their loved ones to receive potentially lethal Covid injections, cases to protect healthcare workers from vaccine mandates, and letters to schools advocating for children.
The SRA investigated four issues, dropped three and referred her to the Solicitors’ Disciplinary Tribunal who will look at the letters to schools.
If they find she has breached their guidelines she could be fined a four-figure sum and be asked to pay costs in the thousands to fund the SRA’s investigation.
Ethical Approach say: ‘These investigations are like saying to a clinical negligence lawyer that they can no longer challenge clinical negligence cases. If the SRA are going to say you can’t challenge the government or start making rulings against individual solicitors because they’re challenging government policy, they might as well say if any patients are ever injured by any NHS intervention, solicitors aren’t allowed to act on a clinical negligence case.’
In November 2019, the SRA updated its warning notice over ‘offensive communications’ which covers offensive comments relating to race, sexual orientation, or religion, referring to women in derogatory terms and making sexually explicit comments, harassment or threatening language, but there is nothing about medical challenges.
The GMC did not comment on overreach or Dr Hilary Jones and said: ‘We only investigate when concerns are raised about a doctor’s ability to practise safely or threaten public confidence in the profession.’
The SRA said it could not comment at this time.
