Harrop MPTS Hearing

[ItsAllGoingToBeFine]

I thought this may be of interest:

www.mpts-uk.org/hearings-and-decisions/medical-practitioners-tribunals/dr-adrian-harrop-nov-21

The tribunal will inquire into the allegation that from 10 May 2018 to 23 November 2019, Dr Harrop inappropriately used his Twitter account to post tweets that were offensive and/or insulting and/or inappropriate in nature and some of which were intended to intimidate.

Hugely grateful to all those posters so generous with their expertise on this thread. Thank you, I was interested in this but wouldn't have been able to follow it effectively.

So his defence is that he had no idea about the policy on social media conduct ... Despite being given 2 written warnings about his social media conduct ... (Because he thought it was part of a wider anti-trans conspiracy??)

The mind boggles

There's a thinking point here for those who dismiss anything someone says, regardless of topic, because they have once said something at odds with your pov.

You can't go through life believing other people's thoughts, feelings and conversations are irrelevant because they don't believe the same things as you, and that no one will ever give anything they ever say any merit as a result.

Am thinking of JKR and KS here as much as anyone.

We're seeing a whole lot of the 'I have a personal reality and it's superior to yours so only mine exists and you saying anything outside it renders you a nonperson' hit the reality of the legal system.

I don't think alternative facts and personal realities can come to work. Certainly not in public facing, responsible jobs.

@Cwenthryth

Surely any public comment about someone else’s health/mental health - like calling someone MH-related slurs etc - is offensive objectively whoever does it, but becomes more inappropriate when done by a practicing doctor who has privileges and responsibilities around diagnosis? The tribunal tweets seemed to suggest that “offensive” would be a worse thing than “inappropriate” but surely that’s not the case in every instance.

The GMC are clear that, if you identify yourself as a doctor on SM, you are acting as a doctor. However, we use so many metaphors about the body and medicine in normal speech that this creates grey areas. If I tell someone on Twitter to go and boil their head, I’m clearly not giving them literal medical advice to do so.

In AH’s case, I expect he will argue that tweets like the ‘morning medication’ one as general metaphors that shouldn’t be given additional weight, just because he’s a doctor. If it were an isolated tweet, I think that would actually be a reasonable argument, which is why it’s so important that the GMC presents the tweets as a pattern of behaviour.

@InvisibleDragon

So his defence is that he had no idea about the policy on social media conduct ... Despite being given 2 written warnings about his social media conduct ... (Because he thought it was part of a wider anti-trans conspiracy??)

The mind boggles

It’s a good defence on paper though- if the panel buy it - because the sanctions for not knowing the details of GMC guidelines are likely to be less then the sanctions for knowingly breaching them. But I suspect that @Motorina will tell us that it’s a defence that’s a hard sell.

So AH is arguing that he is ignorant? As if that’s an excuse rather than just yet another failing as a professional?

@MissLucyEyelesbarrow really hard sell. There's a clear duty to know the standards. Panellists generally take a dim view of registrants who don't. Particularly when they've had them pointed out to them a couple of times already.

Plus, actually, if you need a written standard to tell you "Don't threaten people online", then what does that say about your moral compass?

His defence is that he remained ignorant even after two warnings and supervision, and continued to send (admitted) inappropriate tweets while being visibly a medical doctor?

Goodness me.

@Cwenthryth

So AH is arguing that he is ignorant? As if that’s an excuse rather than just yet another failing as a professional?

Better to be ignorant of a rule than knowingly to breach it, though. And very few doctors could actually tell you chapter and verse of Good Medical Practice - the GMC guidance on behaviour - especially the more esoteric bits like social media policy. Even though ‘ignorance is no defence’ in the eyes of the Law, or GMC, the reality is that ignorance of a rule is sometimes accepted as a mitigating factor, where the ignorance is held to be genuine and reasonable.

I’m not arguing in favour of AH: just trying to place his arguments in the context of ‘the doctor on the Clapham omnibus’.

This is true. As an example, health care professionals have a duty to report criminal matters to the regulator at the point they're charged. It's viewed very seriously if they don't - it's central to their integrity.

I have seen people successfully argue that they had no idea that that was required, and end up suspended for failing to fulfil their duty through ignorance, rather than erased for deliberately hiding information from their regulator.

It's not a complete 'get out of jail' pass, though.

@InvisibleDragon

So his defence is that he had no idea about the policy on social media conduct ... Despite being given 2 written warnings about his social media conduct ... (Because he thought it was part of a wider anti-trans conspiracy??)

The mind boggles

Is he really saying that he thought his warnings were part of an anti-trans conspiracy??? Wow!!!

[quote Motorina]@MissLucyEyelesbarrow really hard sell. There's a clear duty to know the standards. Panellists generally take a dim view of registrants who don't. Particularly when they've had them pointed out to them a couple of times already.

Plus, actually, if you need a written standard to tell you "Don't threaten people online", then what does that say about your moral compass?[/quote]
Good! (That it’s a hard sell)

I was worried about his defence chipping away at the more grey-area tweets, so that the Panel are only left with a handful that are unambiguously offensive, which are then argued away as ‘normal hyperbole on Twitter’ and/or ‘isolated moments of bad behaviour that won’t be repeated’.

Article in Vice here interviewing AH about the tribunal:

www.vice.com/en/article/m7vevb/adrian-harrop-british-doctors-career-could-be-ended-by-tweets-defending-trans-rights

Harrop has been speaking to the press:

www.vice.com/en/article/m7vevb/adrian-harrop-british-doctors-career-could-be-ended-by-tweets-defending-trans-rights

Have you seen some of the GMC rulings?
They come down hardest on things like falsifying timesheets and failing to turn up for a shift than any violation of a patients rights.

You say the press, but really it's disgraced former BBC hack Ben Hunte.

twitter.com/BenInLDN/status/1460939806071001098?s=20

I don't think that Vice article is quite the hagiography that AH was hoping for, given the charge sheet and his own words are in it.

@crosshatching

Hugely grateful to all those posters so generous with their expertise on this thread. Thank you, I was interested in this but wouldn't have been able to follow it effectively.

Thank you from me, too.

There is an account live tweeting @tribunaltweets

And sorry this is the fail but gives some more information

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10204933/NHS-GP-used-Twitter-account-intimidate-social-media-rivals-opposed-pro-transgender-views.html

Is he really saying that he thought his warnings were part of an anti-trans conspiracy??? Wow!!!

I think I misread slightly. I think he thought the complaints that led to his warnings / conversation with seniors were vexatious and came from a wider "anti-trans network", not that the whole thing is a conspiracy theory

I'm laughing at one of the lines AH is quoted as saying in that interview with 'Vice'. I am as a gay white cis doctor...

I think people are really beyond help when they are attributing 'cis' to being a doctor. Can there be 'trans' doctors, too? i.e. you just identify as a doctor.

According tot he fail he tagged the GMC in some of his tweets.

The irony contained in that article.

He continued: "I want them to understand that they make up a small minority of people who have extreme views. Although the battles you’re fighting on social media may seem like you’re winning, you’re not.”