IN THE covid debacle, health professions played a major role in enforcing the official narrative. TCW has covered numerous instances of doctors being punished for stepping out of line. As a regular writer, I can now reveal my experience with the Nursing & Midwifery Council (NMC), who charged me with contradicting government guidance on vaccination, thereby risking the lives of patients.
Throughout my career, the NMC has been my professional regulator. I qualified as a psychiatric nurse in 1990. My last clinical role was managing a mental health crisis service, before moving to research via a master’s in sociology at the University of Surrey. I completed my PhD at the Institute of Psychiatry, and was then appointed to a lecturing position at the Florence Nightingale School of Nursing & Midwifery at King’s College London. The latter post required my status as a nursing registrant.
When the covid vaccines were introduced in late 2020, I feared that blind faith and propaganda about an oxymoronic ‘miracle of science’ would be followed by less impressive and potentially harmful outcomes. On March 4, 2021, the American website Gateway Pundit published my article, ‘British government study confirms Covid-19 vaccine risk’. This related to a Public Health England report indicating that infections increased soon after injection, and I suggested that this may be due to a known phenomenon of a temporary depletion in immunity after a vaccine is taken.
Although my article was factually accurate, a fact-check website declared that it was ‘misleading’, a verdict that was hardly substantiated. On March 8, 2021, I was notified by the NMC of a referral by a ‘Dr Byrne’, who had read my article (or at least the fact-check) and found me on the NMC register. Note that I had not identified myself as a nurse. The NMC informed me of an impending investigation of my fitness to practise. This was unusual: normally the NMC conducts a screening process before deciding to take a case further. My wrong-think was obviously a very serious concern.
A few weeks before the article was published, I had left the university to work for the Workers of England trade union. This meant that I did not need my nursing registration. Therefore, I was in a stronger position to fight than if my job had been imperilled by NMC investigation or sanction.
The allegation was:
‘Failure to uphold your position as a registered nurse – in that you promoted health advice which is contrary to official health advice in the context of a global pandemic. In doing so you encouraged the public to distrust official government advice and undermined trust and confidence in the nursing profession.’
In fact, I hadn’t given advice, but written a journalistic report. From the outset, I was confident that the NMC had no reasonable case against me. I submitted my statement, supported by principled and evidence-based arguments by three experts (general practitioner Helen Westwood, biostatistician Paul Cuddon, and Roger Watson, an esteemed professor of nursing. I shall quote from each of their statements:
PC: ‘On the basis that there is consistent, increasing real-world and clinical evidence of increased infections in the two weeks after vaccination, the points raised by Dr Niall McCrae need to be addressed as a matter of urgency.’
HW: ‘It appears that Dr McCrae is being targeted for raising questions that more medical professionals should be asking. To penalise him would not only be a disservice to him and his profession but to our patients who deserve answers to the questions he is asking.’
RW: ‘I re-read the article and found it hard to reconcile the allegations being made with the article I was reading. From the title and throughout the contents of the article, there is nothing that supports the allegations.’
The NMC, overwhelmed with referrals of Covid-19 dissidents, took a long time to do anything. In September 2022, I received a report by two investigators (Velia Soames and Victoria Taylor). They applied Kafkaesque logic:
‘It isn’t our role to make a final decision about the accuracy of your article or to have an opinion about its contents. Our role is to establish whether there is enough evidence to make it a realistic possibility that the Fitness to Practise Committee would first decide that the comments you made were in line with governmental health advice at the time, and if not, whether your comments had the potential to encourage the public to distrust official government advice and as such undermine trust and confidence in the nursing profession.’
Apparently, my doctorate meant that I was claiming expertise in the health domain, but that, as I was merely a nurse, I could not have such expertise:
‘In our view, the title of Dr, or indeed nurse, would likely lead members of the public to believe you had expert medical knowledge in this field, and that your advice/comments could be trusted, when in fact it appears you did not have such expert knowledge.’
The investigators seemed to believe that I am unable to comprehend scientific reports on the effectiveness and safety of medical treatment. I have written almost a hundred peer-reviewed academic papers, and sat on an NHS research ethics committee for eleven years. In 2020, I wrote (with Dr Edward Purssell) a definitive manual on systematic literature reviewing, recently published in a second edition. You’d think that I deserve some credit. More worryingly, the NMC is belittling its own profession.
Accusing me of discouraging people from getting vaccinated, contrary to public health advice, the investigators stated that the ‘alleged failings’ showed ‘underlying problems with your attitude’. Perhaps the NMC should fit a mirror in its office. The investigators asserted that ‘you appear not to accept the regulatory concern, and your responses to us suggest you do not intend to change your practice in the future.’
Although I was polite and cooperative in my correspondence, I was regarded as arrogant for not accepting that I’d done anything wrong. My attitude, the investigators decided, would be ‘hard to remediate’. This is the justice of the Soviet Union, where Gulags were filled with thought criminals who could never be rehabilitated. Clearly, the investigators thought that I was a very bad person, unbefitting of nursing registration:
‘We are therefore of the view that the risk of you repeating this conduct remains, and in our view, you are currently a risk to the health, safety or wellbeing of the public, meaning that your practice needs to be restricted in some way.’
The expert statements on my behalf were ignored: like me, Westwood, Cuddon and Watson must try harder next time. The investigators recommended a fitness-to-practise hearing, but first, the case would go to the NMC’s legal advisors.
Months went by, then years. Eventually, in March 2025, I received a letter from the NMC stating that the legal advice was not to prosecute. However, that is merely advice, and I was told that an NMC committee could carry on regardless. I was invited to a preliminary hearing, with a full hearing scheduled as a contingency one month later.
I was not expecting that the NMC would go against the legal advice, but I agreed to attend the initial hearing, with my legal representative Robin Tilbrook. I prepared for my defence, including my argument that if registrants are not allowed to oppose government policy, why isn’t the NMC investigating nurses who walked out of wards on strike?
The preliminary hearing went smoothly. The NMC legal advisor stated that there was no public interest in pursuing the case. Robin Tilbrook concurred with this, emphasising that the NMC should not be interfering with my right to freedom of expression. After an adjournment, the chairwoman informed me of the decision to drop the case. After four years and two months, I was scot-free!
The NMC was corrupted by Covid-19, and it needs to learn from its mistakes. I was fortunate, but other nurses have been persecuted and ejected from the register – with public shaming. I am grateful for support from HART, and hope that my case encourages others to stand their ground against the censorial regime.
This is an edited version of an article onHARTwebsite, republished with kind permission.
