Dr Sarah Benn’s Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service (MPTS) suspension review begins this week along with a second tribunal hearing for protest following a second referral by the General Medical Council (GMC)

Alice - June 9, 2025June 9, 2025

Dr Sarah Benn, a retired GP with over 30 years of unblemished NHS service is facing her Fitness to Practice Tribunal review this week. Dr Benn became the first doctor to be suspended from the medical register in April 2024 (1) following her conviction and imprisonment for breaking a private injunction, an infringement for which she had already been penalised twice (in law and through the private judiciary) before the GMC saw fit to punish her again a third time for her actions taken to protect and safeguard public health.

Dr Benn with the sign she held when arrested and imprisoned for breaking an injunction outside Kingsbury Oil Terminal

The General Medical Council have also decided to refer her for a second disciplinary hearing, scheduled to coincide with this review, for her involvement in a peaceful animal rights protest that resulted in minor chalk spray damage, and for which she has already served 100 hours of community service.

The decision taken by the GMC to prosecute Dr Benn’s case at tribunal, and the subsequent decision by the MPTS to suspend her for 5 months has drawn widespread criticism from within the UK medical community (2, 3), and members of the public (4) and has resulted in an intervention by the UN Special Rapporteur for environmental defenders (5).

Among the numerous concerns relating to Dr Benn’s case are the following:

– Failure to recognise the emergency context within which her actions of civil disobedience took place, namely climate and ecological breakdown, and thus the whistleblowing nature of the actions which were clearly undertaken with the motivation of protecting and safeguarding public health,

– Failure of the General Medical Council and Fitness to Practice Tribunal to acknowledge the evidence to support civil disobedience and within this context to appropriately consider the conflicting responsibility of a medical professional to “protect the public from harm” and to “act within the law”,

– Failure of the General Medical Council to evidence its assertion that public confidence in the medical profession is undermined by non-violent acts of civil disobedience in breach of the law, particularly given that research they themselves commissioned suggests otherwise (6),

– The lack of ethical and moral independence demonstrated by the General Medical Council, which has admitted that it will not consider ethical and moral aspects of the case, and will instead simply de facto accept any verdicts handed down by a state which has increasingly criminalised protest (7),

– The failure of the GMC and the Fitness to practice tribunal to recognise the difference between upholding the “rule of law” (which broadly is the protection of life) which is enhanced by protest, and upholding “rule by law” (where each letter of the law must always be upheld), which is a feature of an authoritarian state (8),

– The General Medical Council’s own failure, under its legal responsibility to protect Public Health, to act in a commensurate way in light of the climate and health emergency (9).

Health workers show solidarity with Dr Sarah Benn by protesting in the injuncted area outside Kinsgsbury Oil terminal during her GMC tribunal appeal hearing

Since Dr Benn was suspended by the MPTS in April Last year, both retired GP Dr Warner (10), and working GP, Dr Hart (11) have also been suspended from the medical register. Dr Warner received a 3-month suspension without review which has now been spent, whilst Dr Hart was issued an interim order suspension pending his tribunal in October this year. Both have been imprisoned for peaceful climate action motivated by their responsibility to protect the public from the climate health emergency (12).

Health workers and members of the public during one of at least 24 protests and vigils outside the GMC London offices

References:

Media Contacts:

Ali Rowe – 07901 916489

Dr Alice Clack – 07919 882601