NHS to tackle antisemitism after report finds Jewish staff and patients ‘routinely ostracised’

The NHS is taking action to tackle Antisemitism after a government-ordered report found that Jewish patients and staff face “routine ostracism” in the service.Anti-Jewish hatred in the NHS means some patients hide their identity and staff “suffer in silence”, a review by Lord Mann, the government’s adviser on Antisemitism, has found.Moves to combat it will see NHS staff’s freedom to display political symbols on their uniforms restricted and bosses of the service’s 205 health trusts in England given Antisemitism training.Antisemitism is so rife in the NHS that it threatens its basis as a universal service, with Jews not confident they will receive proper treatment, Mann will say in his 60-page report, which will be published on Thursday. He will outline how some Jewish patients have decided not to seek treatment or put off having important care as a result of Antisemitism and highlight “shocking examples of intimidation and abuse within the health service”.Wes Streeting commissioned Mann last year when he was health secretary to investigate Antisemitism in the NHS after reports that several doctors had made comments displaying hatred of Jews.Wes Streeting, the then-health secretary, commissioned the report into Antisemitism in the NHS. Photograph: Tolga Akmen/EPATwo doctors, Manoj Sen and Mohammed Asif Munaf, have recently been struck off the medical register and banned from practising medicine in the UK because of antisemitic behaviour.Another doctor, Rahmeh Aladwan, is due to go on trial at Bristol crown court next year on charges of inviting support for Hamas – a proscribed organisation – stirring up racial hatred and using threatening and insulting words at a protest.She is alleged to have posted “free the world from Jewish supremacy” on social media, and to have posted that she did not condemn Hamas or its 7 October 2023 attack on Israel, but did “condemn the existence of Israel”.Mann’s report sets out changes the NHS will now push through as an urgent priority to become a “responsible and inclusive employer”.The moves will target all forms of racism and discrimination in the NHS, including racism against black and ethnic minority staff and Islamophobia, not only Antisemitism.Jewish staff are the only religious group in the NHS workforce who report that they are experiencing growing discrimination by colleagues, the latest staff survey found. Some have been so distressed by their experience that they are considering quitting the service.“Jewish people have to be confident they will receive the same treatment as everyone else, at all times in all situations. If people feel, as they do, that some have to hide their identity as patients or suffer in silence as staff, then the universality of the NHS is fundamentally breached,” Mann said.NHS care providers such as hospitals will become “the first line of defence against racism and discrimination for patients and staff”. The chairs and chief executives of all trusts will undergo new mandatory training in anti-racism, including Antisemitism, within the next six months.“Since Lord Mann was commissioned to undertake this review, the experience of the Jewish community in this country has only worsened. The arson attack on a Hatzola ambulance station in Golders Green in April was the clearest sign yet of how growing Antisemitism in our society has reached our health services,” said Rebecca Gray, a director at the NHS Alliance.“It is vital that Jewish staff and patients feel safe at work, are able to practise and seek treatment without fear of prejudice or abuse, and are provided with the respect and dignity we all deserve.”Streeting last year said the NHS is bearing the brunt of Britain’s return to “ugly” 1970s and 1980s-style racism.Helen Morgan, the Liberal Democrat health spokesperson, said the ‘poison’ of all forms of racism in the NHS must be stopped. Photograph: Christopher Furlong/Getty ImagesProf Nicola Ranger, the general secretary and chief executive of the Royal College of Nursing, said: “It’s absolutely essential that staff are safe at work, but the reality is racism in the NHS is on the rise, as is violence, aggression and sexual harassment. That these behaviours have become so normalised is alarming.”The General Medical Council, which regulates doctors in the UK, received 779 complaints of alleged Antisemitism by UK doctors between October 2023 and December 2025, often about social media posts. Many complaints were against the same doctor. It investigated 86 cases.As well as erasing Sen and Munaf from its register it also advised four other doctors about their behaviour, warned three others and sought “undertakings” from another. It is still examining 31 other cases.Helen Morgan, the Liberal Democrat health spokesperson, welcomed the action to stop the spread of the “poison” of all forms of racism in the NHS.