Jess Phillips has suggested she received “quicker” NHS treatment because she voted in favour of an immediate ceasefire in Gaza (Express, Mail, Telegraph).
Speaking at an event billed as ‘An Evening with Jess Phillips’, held at the Kiln Theatre in north London, Ms Phillips, the MP for Birmingham Yardley, recounted how her stance on the conflict helped speed up her care when a Palestinian doctor treated her during a visit to an A&E department at a Birmingham hospital.
The minister for safeguarding and violence against women and girls quit her shadow ministerial role in November last year, when Labour was in opposition, to vote in favour of an immediate ceasefire.
Ms Phillips was one of eight frontbenchers and dozens of backbench Labour MPs who defied Sir Keir Starmer on the issue after he had instructed them not to vote for an SNP amendment calling for an immediate ceasefire.
Labour MPs were told to vote for a Labour amendment instead, which called for longer pauses in the conflict to deliver aid, stopping short of calling for a full ceasefire.
In her resignation letter to Sir Keir, Ms Phillips said: “I must vote with my constituents, my head, and my heart which has felt as if it were breaking over the last four weeks with the horror of the situation in Israel and Palestine.
“I see no route where the current military action does anything but put at risk the hope of peace and security for anyone in the region now and in the future.”
At the recent general election, Ms Phillips held onto her Birmingham Yardley seat by 693 votes as she narrowly beat Jody McIntyre, who stood for George Galloway’s pro-Palestine Workers Party of Britain.
During her recent promotional event in North London, Ms Phillips reportedly said she had gone to A&E because she was having trouble breathing and that the department was very busy and chaotic.
“I have genuinely seen better facilities, health facilities, in war zones, in developing countries around the world,” she said.
Describing the situation when she got to the front of the queue, she said: “I got through because of who I am. Also, the doctor who saw me was Palestinian, as it turns out. Almost all the doctors in Birmingham seemed to be.”
She said: “He was sort of like, ‘I like you. You voted for a ceasefire’. [Because of that] I got through quicker.”
Writing for the Spectator, Brendan O’Neill said that this claim requires urgent clarification from Phillips herself and from the Home Office where she is currently employed.
“If a politician was prioritised over ordinary citizens for urgent healthcare, that is outrageous,” he said. “In an A&E unit, even more so than in society itself, everyone should be treated equally. Need and need alone should be the only basis on which people are prioritised.”
Asked about the case, and specifically whether Sir Keir Starmer would approve of medical staff “triaging patients according to their political views”, the Prime Minister’s official spokesman said the NHS should treat everyone the same “regardless of who they are”.
That was the right answer, of course – but news of Ms Phillips’s boast comes as concerns about the politically influenced ‘gatekeeping’ of critical services across the West continue to mount.
Last year, a female survivor of sexual violence had a potentially life-saving operation at a London hospital scrapped as a result of her request that only biological women be involved in her intimate care.
Former solicitor Teresa Steele was due to have a complicated abdominal operation at The Princess Grace hospital on Oct 10th last year, and in her admission forms stated that she required single-sex bathrooms and would not discuss pronouns.
However, on Oct 6th, as she underwent her pre-op assessment, a transgender nurse not involved in her care entered her private examination room, making eye contact with her while doing so. Ms Steele believes she was “targeted” in this way because she had expressed her legally protected gender critical beliefs during the admission process.
Later that day she sent a complaint, repeating her demand for same-sex care, and asking for assurances that after her operation a male – or a transwoman – would only enter her room with her prior agreement.
At 7.36pm the following evening, hospital CEO Maxine Estop Green notified her via email that “we do not share your beliefs and are not able to adhere to your requests” and that therefore the operation was being cancelled.
Ms Steele did not see the email, and only found out about the cancellation when a prescription did not arrive. Following a public outcry, including a petition with thousands of signatures, Ms Steele’s surgery was rescheduled.
The CEO later admitted that Ms Steele’s privacy and dignity were breached when the trans nurse entered her room, and Ms Estop Green said she “sincerely apologise[d]” and recognised “how unsettling this must have been”.
This is not the only recent example of critical care being denied to women with gender critical views.
A private medical hospital in the US recently refused to treat a woman with breast cancer because of the “disrespectful and hurtful remarks” she made in a private email to her physician. What were the outrageous things she said? She objected to the presence of a trans pride flag in the clinic’s reception area.
In Canada, a woman was evicted from a domestic violence shelter for women after expressing concerns to management about gender identity ideology, following two separate incidents with transgender women in the residence. “The fact is you’re transphobic,” the manager told her during the eviction process, adding: “[T]his is not the right place for you.”
Closer to home, recent guidance from the NHS Confederation – published in partnership with the LGBT Foundation – warns that patients may be found guilty of direct discrimination or harassment if they refuse care from a transgender medical professional. (Which isn’t true.)
“If a patient or relative refuses to be treated or cared for by a healthcare worker due to the employee’s protected characteristic of gender reassignment, and this request has no reasonable clinical merit, this may be direct discrimination or harassment,” the 97-page guidance states, adding that patients who express “any such views… may be removed from the premises”. Remarkably, the document goes on to suggest that patients with dementia “should still be challenged” if they express discriminatory views about transgender staff.
In a decision that campaign group Don’t Divide Us has described as “deeply worrying”, the Health Secretary Wes Streeting recently announced that the NHS “can and should” turn away patients who are racist towards its staff.
He was speaking in the wake of an appalling attack on two Filipino nurses as they travelled to work during the civil unrest that spread across the UK following the murder of three young girls in Southport.
Following his comments, the Royal College of Nursing updated its guidance on what constitutes grounds for turning patients away. The guidance now lists “when there is discriminatory behaviour, including racism” as one of the situations that may justify a nurse declining to give care. The new addition is the specific mention of racism.
