Dr Sarah Benn said that as a doctor, she had a moral duty to take action to protect life and health
A doctor, arrested and jailed for her involvement in Just Stop Oil protests, has had her medical licence suspended for five months.
Dr Sarah Benn, formerly a GP in Birmingham, was arrested after taking part in peaceful demonstrations at the Kingsbury oil terminal in Warwickshire.
Dr Benn, who had already given up practising in August 2022, said that as a doctor, she had a moral duty to take action to protect life and health.
The Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service (MPTS) imposed the suspension on Tuesday after ruling last week that Dr Benn’s fitness to practise was impaired.
A tribunal has found Dr Sarah Benn’s fitness to practise to be impaired
The British Medical Association (BMA) has said it is “very concerned” by a tribunal’s finding that a doctor’s participation in Just Stop Oil protests amounted to professional misconduct.
The Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service ruled Dr Sarah Benn’s fitness to practise was impaired and said it must consider whether a sanction should be imposed on her registration.
The General Medical Council (GMC), which referred the case, said the hearing was convened due to the fact her actions at Kingsbury oil terminal in Warwickshire broke the law and resulted in her imprisonment.
But Dr Emma Runswick, BMA deputy chair of council, said there was “no possible public or patient interest” in such circumstances for proceedings where potential sanctions included the removal of a doctor’s licence.
Addressing the tribunal’s findings, Dr Runswick said the BMA was concerned Dr Benn’s registration as a doctor could be threatened for taking part in peaceful protests relating to the climate change emergency.
Evidence of the crisis is all too visible. At the end of February 2024, some 6.24m individuals were waiting for 7.54m National Health Service (NHS) hospital appointments in England alone. This compares to 2.5m appointments in 2010 when the Conservative government came to office. It increased to around 4.6m in February 2020 just before the pandemic, and hit 6.2m in February 2022 and has increased since then.
The consequences are deadly. Some 300,000 people a year are dying whilst waiting for a hospital appointment. Millions have a long wait for ambulance and treatment in accident and emergency departments. In 2023, 14,000 people died in Accident & Emergency departments at hospitals. The deceased are typically the less well-off and suffering from delays and cancellations of hospital appointments.
The NHS has been weakened by years of underinvestment. It has fewer doctors and nurses per person than most of its peer countries. Due to lack of beds, staff and equipment, Britons die sooner from cancer and heart disease than people in many other rich countries. In 2022, over 39,000 people in England died prematurely of cardiovascular conditions including heart attacks, coronary heart disease and stroke.
It is not only hospitals; people are finding it hard to see a family doctor, often known as general practitioners (GPs). In 2015, the government promised to increase the number of GPs by 5,000 by 2020, but February 2024 there were the equivalent of 1,862 fewer fully qualified full-time GPs than there were in September 2015. Despite the pandemic and an ageing population, government funding for GPs in 2022-23 was 3.3% lower than in 2018-19. One in 20 patients have to wait at least four weeks to see a GP, a necessary precursor for most hospital appointments.
The UK has 49 dentists per 100,000 people, the lowest rate among G7 countries Last year, 23,577 dentists performed NHS work, down 695 on the previous year, and over 1,100 down on pre-pandemic numbers. Low rates of pay are cited as a major reason for dentists’ refusal to accept NHS patients. People are reduced to using pliers to pull their own teeth out and use glue to manage dental problems. Lack of oral health can increase the risk of gum, mouth and heart disease.
Dr Sarah Benn said she did not take the protests and disruptions she had participated in lightly
A tribunal has found a doctor’s fitness to practise to be impaired due to misconduct after she was involved in a number of Just Stop Oil protests.
Dr Sarah Benn, a GP in Birmingham until 2022, was arrested after taking part in demonstrations at the Kingsbury oil terminal in Warwickshire.
The General Medical Council (GMC) said the proceedings were not brought as a reaction to her participation in protests, but the fact that her actions broke the law and resulted in her imprisonment.
The tribunal said it must now consider what sanction, if any, to impose on the doctor’s registration.
Dr Benn said as a doctor, she had a moral duty to take action to protect life and health and that the climate emergency was a health emergency which was “happening now”.
Image of the Green Party’s Carla Denyer on BBC Question Time.
Responding to Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s plans to stop GPs issuing sick notes to people too ill to work, Green Party co-leader Carla Denyer said:
“How cold hearted do you have to be, and how lacking in empathy, to see this crisis of ill health as anything other than caused by decades of austerity and lack of investment in the NHS?
“The PM should be fixing the NHS so that people can get well, not blaming people who are ill.
“We would invest in mending the health and social care system, not denying people the right to see a GP when they need it.”
