The General Medical Council (GMC) has disclosed the scale of complaints made about doctors since October 2023, after a campaign group accused it of not doing enough. Read carefully, the figures tell a story the campaigners would rather not hear: most of the doctors complained about did nothing that warranted regulatory action.
As reported by Doctors.net.uk on 5 October 2026, the Campaign Against Antisemitism (CAA) said, on the basis of a Freedom of Information response, that "real action has been taken" in only six cases between 7 October 2023 and 31 January 2026, and accused the regulator of "sweeping antisemitism under the carpet".
The GMC pushed back. It said that between October 2023 and September 2026 it received more than 780 complaints related to antisemitism, involving about 170 doctors. Regulatory action was taken in 37 complaints involving around 30 doctors. The regulator put the proportion of doctors who received regulatory action after an antisemitism complaint at approximately 19.5%.
Four in five
Put the other way round, around four in five doctors who were the subject of these complaints faced no regulatory action at all. Every one of them still had to live with a complaint hanging over them, and some will have been investigated before being cleared.
Complaints have tended to arrive in bulk. GMC figures reported by Pulse in May 2024 showed that 316 of the 328 antisemitism complaints received between 7 October 2023 and 8 March 2024 were made against just 67 identifiable doctors. At that point 213 had already been closed at triage, and only 12 were under investigation.
Lawyers who defend doctors saw what was happening. Andrea James, a regulatory lawyer at Keystone Law, told Pulse her firm was receiving an "influx of new cases from multiple regulators" relating to comments on the war in Gaza. In a post on X she warned that there are "people and organisations" actively looking for content to found a complaint, "often maliciously or by putting a bizarre interpretation on the words used".
The chilling effect
A GMC spokesperson told Pulse that "like all citizens, doctors are entitled to personal beliefs" and that there is "nothing preventing doctors from exercising their right to speak about or campaign on issues". The regulator said safeguards are in place to make sure referrals are "fair, appropriate and proportionate".
HWAC welcomes those words, and we are clear that genuine antisemitism must always be challenged. But the numbers show that the overwhelming majority of complaints have not led to action, and we believe the cost of that flood falls on healthcare workers who have done nothing wrong. A junior doctor or nurse who watches colleagues being reported over Gaza learns one lesson: silence is safer. That is a disaster for a profession whose duty is to speak up when patients and colleagues are being harmed.
The GMC should not bow to pressure to take action against more doctors simply because more complaints are filed. It should publish how many complaints come in bulk or from organised campaigns, and how many of those end with no case to answer, so that every clinician can see that speaking up for Palestinian lives is protected.
