Warning for Antisemitic Comments Upheld on Appeal
14 March 2024
The Professional Standards Authority (PSA) unsuccessfully challenged the decision of a Fitness to Practise Committee of the General Pharmaceutical Council which had imposed only a Warning for conduct (in the form of unscripted comments) which was found to be, in two cases, offensive and antisemitic and, in two other cases, offensive but not antisemitic: Professional Standards Authority for Health and Social Care v General Pharmaceutical Council & Anor [2024] EWHC 577 (Admin) Chamberlain J
The comments were said to have been made at the Al Quds rally held (and led by the pharmacist) on 18 June 2017, four days after the fire at Grenfell Tower. The pharmacist addressed the rally at length using a loudhailer and led chants. There were interjections from counter-demonstrators supportive of Israel.
The proceedings related to the following comments:
1 “It is in their genes. The Zionists are here to occupy Regent Street. It’s in their genes, it’s in their genetic code.”
2 “European alleged Jews. Remember brothers and sisters, Zionists are not Jews.”
3 “Any Zionist, any Jew, coming into your centre supporting Israel, any Jew coming into your centre who is a Zionist. Any Jew coming into your centre who is a member for the Board of Deputies, is not a Rabbi, he’s an imposter.”
4 “They are responsible for the murder of the people in Grenfell. The Zionist supporters of the Tory Party.”
On 5 November 2020 a Committee found that these comments were offensive but not antisemitic and issued a Warning as sanction. The PSA successfully challenged that decision before Johnson J in the Administrative Court who found that the Committee had regard to matters which were irrelevant. The judge observed that the underlying allegation related back to a period of four years when Mr A was not acting as a pharmacist. However, he considered that the case engaged significant questions of public confidence and should be remitted to the Committee.
At a further hearing in August 2023, the same committee found that allegations (c) and (d) were antisemitic and offensive but imposed a Warning by way of sanction.
Andrew Colman, counsel for the GPhC said it was important to consider the pharmacist’s comments in context: a lengthy expression of impassioned, anti-Zionist, pro-Palestinian political speech, during which he repeatedly sought to distinguish Judaism and Zionism. The pharmacist had not been charged with making intentionally antisemitic remarks. This was a deliberate and carefully considered decision on the part of the GPhC, which was a public authority with a duty to have regard to Art 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights. This was of particular importance when considering the importance of the right to freedom of political speech.
Thus the GPhC expressly put its case on the basis that the passion of the pharmacist’s political speech propelled him beyond the boundaries of professional propriety, but to suggest intentional antisemitism would have been inconsistent with he tenor of the rest of his remarks that day. The committee endorsed that approach.
His Lordship observed that antisemitism may sometimes be more difficult to spot than other forms of racism, in part because of the circumlocution used to disguise it, but comment (d) fell into the obviously racist category. The word ‘Zionist’ was a euphemism for ‘Jew’ otherwise it made no sense. The comment was an instance of two well-worn, racist conspiracy theories: that Jews control the government and that they use that control to commit acts of murder. It was a matter of concern that even by the time of the second hearing in August 2023 the pharmacist did not recognise that.
It was, however, a separate question whether the undue prominence which the Committee gave to this aspect of their findings vitiated its decision on sanction. In the court’s judgment, it did not. Given their factual findings, it could not be concluded that the Committee was wrong to decide that a warning was appropriate, and that a greater sanction (including suspension) was not.
The complaint about inadequate reasons was not made out. The Committee approached its task in a methodical and logical way. It made findings of fact for which it gave comprehensible reasons and explained the inferences drawn from those findings. Although the Committee attributed greater significance than they should have done to one of their findings, their conclusions were adequately, and indeed, amply reasoned.