NHS must do more to discipline staff involved in sexual abuse, ministers told

By David Lynch, Reporter16th May 2023News EnglandGovernment / Politics, Hospitals, News England, NHS, Primary Care / GP's, Sexual Abuse, Victim Support

The NHS must do more to ensure staff members involved in sexual misconduct or abuse are disciplined, ministers have been warned.

Liberal Democrat MP Daisy Cooper (pictured) said a constituent of hers had been subject to sexual misconduct by a medical professional, but had been rebuffed by the health service after repeatedly calling for the incident to be investigated.

The woman, who she called Joan, was also “treated appallingly” by the professional bodies tasked with the investigation, the St Albans MP said.

The Lib Dem MP, who is the party’s health spokeswoman, told a Westminster Hall debate: “A brave constituent of mine — let us call her Joan, which is not her real name — told me that she was a survivor of sexual misconduct by a medical professional during her treatment.

“Soon after it happened, Joan disclosed it to her GP, who raised a complaint to the specific NHS trust. The complaint was treated by the NHS trust’s human resources team as an employer-employee dispute. What was Joan’s status in this? Not a victim, not a complainant.

“She was relegated to being nothing more than a third-party witness: a third-party witness who not only was treated appallingly by the medical professional’s council, but was not even entitled to know the outcome of the case, the case in which she was the victim.”

Ms Cooper added: “Thanks to her GP, Joan was then contacted by the General Medical Council (GMC), which wanted to investigate the professional concerned, but Joan was not mentally or medically in a position to progress the case.

“She tried to progress it about seven years later, but she was prevented from doing so by the GMC’s five-year rule, which prevents the GMC from investigating a professional’s fitness to practice if the case is older than five years.

“The GMC can, of course, still investigate where there are exceptional circumstances in the public interest, but the GMC told me that Joan’s case did not meet the threshold.

“It would not tell me how it defined ‘exceptional circumstances’ and refused to disclose the legal advice that it had received about the definition.”

While Joan did separately win a personal injury claim, Ms Cooper told MPs that she and her constituent believed the “medical professional concerned is still practising”, due to a failure of disciplinary procedures.

Ms Cooper called on the Government to “scrap the GMC’s five-year rule, which allows perpetrators of sexual misconduct to evade investigation after five years and continue working”.

She added: “Will the Government create a specific and clearly signposted complaints system for complaints of a sexual nature, so that patients, visitors and staff can report allegations within health services and are able to identify which organisations they should approach in order to do so?”

Health minister Maria Caulfield said the Government had plans to “modernise” the GMC’s five-year rule for misconduct complaints.

She told MPs: “We are committed to making it easier for patients to report historical concerns and are looking at modernising the GMC’s five-year rule.

“There was a consultation recently on regulating healthcare professionals. The Government responded to that in February and said they would take that forward, so there are plans to modernise the GMC’s five-year rule on complaints.”

The minister also said the Government was “taking action” to tackle sexual misconduct and abuse within the NHS.

She added: “We encourage anyone who has been a victim to come forward and report that, in the knowledge that the report will be taken seriously.

“Every organisation within NHS England systems, whether community trusts, hospital trusts or any other setting, has robust systems in place not just for reporting allegations and concerns, but for following them up.

“All reports must be recorded, investigated and dealt with by NHS providers. That includes, where necessary, taking action against the perpetrator, but also involving the police.”

A GMC spokesperson said: “There is no place for any form of sexual misconduct in the healthcare services. Sexual assault is a criminal offence and any doctor who has committed such acts should be investigated by the police.

“We work with the police and employers to investigate any concerns raised with us and where appropriate, we will seek the maximum sanction of erasure when these cases are referred to an independent medical tribunal for a hearing.

“Under the current, outdated legislation that governs our work we are unable to consider any complaint that is more than five years old, unless certain criteria are met. This is not in the interests of the public we’re here to protect, and we look forward to the legislation being reformed by the Government.’”