BMA condemns punitive action taken against climate activist doctors

‘If we punish the doctors who shout for help, who is left to resuscitate society?’

The question was posed by GP Nora Murray-Cavanagh as she tabled a motion at the BMA’s annual representative meeting asking doctors to recognise that climate change is a public health emergency and that medical professionals have an ethical duty to advocate for urgent action.

The motion was passed by a majority of doctors, who condemned punitive action against colleagues who take part in non-violent climate activism, including regulatory complaints or employment repercussions. 

It called on the BMA’s professional regulation committee to push for explicit protections within doctors’ contracts, GMC processes and workforce policies to ensure doctors do not face career detriment for engaging in non-violent climate advocacy.

The motion came after a number of doctors have been jailed and faced professional sanctions for non-violent activism relating to climate change, including retired GP Sarah Benn, who recently had her suspension from the medical register extended, fellow retired GP and climate activist Diana Warner, and GP Patrick Hart, who was jailed this year for criminal damage.  

Introducing the motion, Dr Murray-Cavanagh said doctors were ‘shouting for help’.

‘The weather’s volatility isn’t just inconvenient; it’s an inescapable symptom. Our patients are already feeling the effects; damp housing, mould, heatstroke, cancelled clinics, flooded streets and fields; wider still, crop failure, forced migration, geopolitical instability.

‘And yet, when doctors try to raise the alarm, peacefully, they are punished.’

Dr Murray-Cavanagh said Dr Benn’s punishments – she was jailed as well as suspended from the medical register - had been ‘disproportionate’ as her actions ‘harmed no-one’. ‘It sends a chilling message to all of us,’ she said.

Noting the Royal College of GPs’ motto, ‘compassion empowered with knowledge’, Dr Murray-Cavanagh said: ‘When the law protects the status quo at the expense of public health we have an ethical duty to challenge it and at times that includes breaking it, non-violently, transparently, responsibly. When the law and regulation is not fit for purpose, we make it better.’

She said it was not ‘cherry-picking’ to allow protest for climate change specifically, because ‘climate activism seeks to prevent mass suffering, it’s about protecting life, not judging it’.

Dr Murray-Cavanagh said doctors were ‘rightly held to a higher standard’ but that in itself includes acting with ‘morale courage’ when necessary – noting how the GMC’s Good Medical Practice guidelines include the core principles to ‘protect life, raise concerns and challenge injustice’. 

‘This motion doesn’t undermine professionalism, it reclaims it. We will keep pushing, because this crisis is inescapable and our duty is clear.’

Consultant psychiatrist Jan Wise spoke against the motion, saying non-violent protest is ‘not without its harms’.

‘I agree that we shouldn’t punish people for protest, or just because they’ve been arrested’, he said. ‘But perhaps we shouldn’t automatically excuse criminal acts.’

He suggested that when a regulator’s rules are repeatedly ignored and professionals ‘don’t care how often they are going to slap you on the wrist’ they can be ‘sort of tied to their hands’.

‘When doctors face no consequences for breaches, even for seemingly noble causes, it erodes the perception of impartiality and fairness in regulation,’ said Dr Wise. ‘If exceptions are made based on popularity, or agreement with the protest, it introduces bias and inconsistency. It opens the doors to flout regulation based on personal conviction. 

‘This risks legitimising future breaches, from misinformation to acts which cause real harms. It sends a message that rules are optional, that personal belief overrides collective responsibility. If our members are held to account selectively, we rapidly slide into the morass that is the ends justify the means, that the law can be ignored with impunity. That is not justice, that is mob rule. By all means protest, but within the law or accept the consequences.’ 

Consultant paediatrician Reyhana Henderson said she sees the effects of climate change and air pollution in the deprived areas she works in, including on patients’ respiratory systems. 

Having been engaged in climate change debate, including through her royal college, she said: ‘I never felt it would take my civil right to protest on the streets against the issue that’s affecting all of us, our future generations and our patients.’

‘The ethical and practical implications of criminalising doctors for protest is huge, with devastating consequences for them.’

Noting the powers granted to police, through the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022, to manage and restrict demonstrations deemed ‘more than minor’, Dr Henderson said doctors and other healthcare workers have faced ‘severe consequences’ – not only in criminal courts but from the GMC, which she argued is unjust.

Consultant hepatologist Callum Wood said that the ‘basic principle of citizenship is equality under the law’ as he spoke against the motion. 

‘This might not be a popular thing to say, but doctors should not be treated as a special case over and above their fellow citizens. And I don’t fully accept that climate change should be treated as a special case on its own. There are many, many things wrong with this world.’

‘I agree on a duty to prevent mass suffering but as a hepatologist I see the real-world effect of suffering from alcohol. I don’t think I have a justification to chain myself to the gates of a brewery. So there is a line, and it can be crossed.’

Consultant Huda Mahmoud, speaking in favour of the motion, said ‘climate change is a catastrophe’.

‘It is not in the establishment’s interests to admit that climate change is a catastrophe facing us all. We need to acknowledge it’s a catastrophe, we need to acknowledge that we need to address the catastrophe, we need to address and acknowledge the fact that doctors advocate for social justice – they always have done and I hope they always will do. 

‘We have to protect them when they do that, when they put their head above the parapet and say “this is not OK”.’

Doctors supported the motion but voted against the section that called for the BMA to provide legal and professional support to doctors facing disciplinary action, fitness-to-practise investigations, or other career consequences due to non-violent climate activism.

The association, which has previously recognised the climate emergency as a health emergency, had supported Dr Benn in her High Court appeal earlier this year. 

BMA treasurer Trevor Pickersgill said voting through that part of the policy would mean the BMA acting as a medical defence organisation in relation to all climate change cases, rather than judging each specific case on its own merits and would be ‘extremely costly’. 

Dr Murray-Cavanagh accepted that the association is ‘grappling’ with the issue but called for bravery and ‘collective responsibility’.

The debate followed a motion earlier in the conference where delegates agreed that the association is ‘horrified’ that some defendants prosecuted for non-violent protest have been refused the opportunity to explain their motives to juries and given prison sentences longer than some people who took part in last year’s right-wing riots, such as in the case of Patrick Hart.

Delegates agreed that professional regulatory bodies should as a matter of principle decline to take disciplinary action against those convicted of forms of civil disobedience which do not involve violence.