SOLICITOR Philip Hyland has won another victory for free speech. Mr Hyland, from PJH Law, is the lawyer who defended former GP and practice partner Dr Sam White. Dr White was gagged by the General Medical Council (GMC) and the Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service (MTPS) for challenging the NHS and Government on their one-sided Covid-19 and Covid pandemic narrative.
Mr Hyland was also involved with the official complaint to the Metropolitan Police in December 2021 against the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA), alleging negligence, misfeasance, corporate manslaughter and misconduct in a public office.
As a consequence, he thinks, a complaint was made to the solicitors’ governing body, the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) which, if upheld, could have resulted in disciplinary action including being struck off.
Mr Hyland, who has challenged Covid measures and has been pivotal in investigating alleged Covid abuses through the alternative media and through his blog, said: ‘I have practised as a solicitor for over 20 years and have an unblemished record.
‘I’ve been reported to the SRA twice in my career. Once back in 2002, after I brought proceedings against a Labour MP who I cannot name for legal reasons.
‘They had been accused of bullying by a member of staff. We settled the night before the case was due to be heard and I was told they were “spitting feathers”.
‘A week after we settled, I received notice that I was to be investigated by a forensic accountant. After going through my books, they found no anomalies and the investigator told me he knew I wasn’t guilty because of my car, a five-year-old Daewoo Lanos. He said he would have expected me to be driving a Mercedes or BMW if I was guilty.
‘The latest complaint came from the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC), after I issued proceedings on behalf of 120 care-home workers in December 2021. The care-home workers did not want to receive a mandatory Covid vaccination. The complaint was also against Sajid Javid, who was then Health Secretary.’
The SRA began investigating the DHSC’s complaint just four weeks later, in January. They had also received an email from the LibDem peer Lord Clement Jones, a consultant for the global law firm DLA Piper. He said that he had been a practising solicitor for 45 years and that he was ‘baffled’ as to why Mr Hyland and his colleague Lois Bayliss, from the firm Broad Yorkshire Law, were ‘entitled to practise’.
The SRA said they had evidence of Mr Hyland’s misconduct, which they said included an appeal, made to the public by him and Ms Bayliss, to assist with a criminal investigation into Covid vaccination injury and the failure of the MHRA to take vaccine injury reports seriously or to act on them. They also cited a public announcement made through letters to GPs and schools stating that crimes were being committed by those who administered Covid vaccines which they considered to be experimental and not fully tested. Then they cited a crowdfunding page for Dr Sam White called ‘Take Back Control’, set up to raise money to defend him against the GMC and the MTPS.
After the complaint was submitted in January, Mr Hyland was instructed ‘not to publish, send, post on social media, or disseminate in any way (or allow his name as a solicitor or the name of his firm to be used to endorse) any misleading or inaccurate information about Covid-19 and/or Covid-19 vaccinations’.
The SRA conceded that he was entitled to his opinions in his personal capacity but claimed they were not allowed in his capacity as a solicitor or as a partner in his legal practice.
The decision not to impose the conditions was made by Annmaria Forbes, one of three senior adjudicators at the SRA, who dismissed the gagging request and said that Mr Hyland posed no risk by disseminating his views. She wrote the following:
‘Mr Hyland is subject to an SRA investigation that commenced on 18 January 2022. It is not the purpose of my decision to consider the substance of that investigation or potential outcome of it, but to decide whether, in light of it, there is a risk to the public, or the trust the public places in the provision of legal services, which makes it necessary for conditions to be imposed.
‘In making my decision the first step is to decide whether there is a risk to the public or the solicitors’ profession which needs to be controlled by restricting his practice in a reasonable and proportionate way.
‘I have to consider whether Mr Hyland in the way he disseminated information or allowed his status as a solicitor to be used in publications presents a risk requiring the imposition of conditions. His motives are irrelevant.’
The SRA sent Mr Hyland a further letter on April 8 claiming the British Medical Association (BMA) had complained about letters he sent to GPs last December. In fact, only one GP had received a letter.
The SRA stated: ‘The BMA has reported concerns it has about letters that its GP members have received in connection to their decisions not to issue NHS exemption certificates in respect of Covid 19 vaccinations. It has found these letters to be inappropriate in respect of their aggressive nature and the threat of legal action. We have seen an example of this letter issued on your firm’s letter head and we are including this issue within the scope of our investigation.’
The SRA failed to produce a formal complaint from the BMA after Mr Hyland asked for a copy, so no further action has been taken and the adjudicator found the letter to be appropriate.
Mr Hyland said: ‘I don’t think it can be a coincidence that the only two occasions the SRA has chosen to investigate me come after I challenged the Government’s Health Minister, the DHSC and an MP. The Government and its representatives must abide by the law and allow these challenges. Not to do so is effectively pushing us into a State-controlled society, something our MPs say they are actively against. It cannot be one rule for us and another for them.’
A spokesman for the SRA said: ‘We can’t and don’t comment on whether we have, or have not had, complaints about any individuals, or whether there are ongoing investigations in relation to a compliant, unless and until such reaches a point where there may be a decision on an outcome/sanction in the public domain.’
