There are many who enjoy making jokes about the NHS being the national religion of Britain. Nevertheless, it isn't secular anymore. Maybe the most alarming aspect of the widespread sectarianism in the health care is that it is no longer kept a secret. There are many who even enjoy it, such as Jess Phillips, the Labour MP.

The Birmingham MP claimed last week that she was expedited through A&E "because of my political views." So she stated, "I got through quicker." "My Palestinian doctor kind of said, 'I like you,'" after seeing me. It is a ceasefire that you voted for.

It is probably best for her that she stepped away from X (Twitter) last month after a post in which she appeared to justify scenes of masked men intimidating a journalist. Because she may have been asked about a two-tier NHS and what might have happened had she dared to – God forbid – speak against the terrorist group Hamas. Or what her treatment might have been if she was a well-known Jewish MP. 

The NHS – like the university, arts, charity and trade union sectors – no longer feels like a safe space for Jewish people. It is an organisation in which people like Dr Wahid Shaida, who gloried in the October 7 massacre as a “welcome punch on the nose”, is allowed to work as a GP. Where the Health Workers for Palestine hold demonstrations outside hospitals. Where nurses wear Palestine badges – with complainants told it is a free speech issue. 

The General Medical Council has reported that the number of complaints about doctors subjecting Jewish colleagues to anti-Semitic abuse after October 7 jumped from eight to 60. According to one poll, three quarters of Jewish healthcare workers have suffered at least one anti-Semitic incident since October 7 – and half reported feeling unsafe at work.

Jewish doctors and NHS workers have told me of their fear that, if they complain, it will only make things worse. One told me: “I wouldn’t tell any doctor or nurse treating me that I’m Jewish because I hear what is said ‘behind the scenes’ and its frightening.” 

Jews often have their ethnicity on their records because certain genetic diseases are more prevalent in the community. But some have become so frightened of experiencing anti-Semitism when they are most vulnerable that they have asked for their religion to be erased.

The NHS is aware of the problem but even its attempt to fight it causes problems, as it emerged this week. Online anti-Semitism training at the Central and North West London NHS Foundation Trust was subject to an attack before it had even started when an “important notice” in its weekly bulletin warned staff against attending, saying: “We have determined that this training and its content may be inappropriate”. Its chief executive Claire Murdoch later apologised.

Something has gone very wrong if the NHS – which controversially spends around £40 million a year on Diversity, Equality and Inclusion at a time when it can ill-afford any wastage – is no longer safe for Jewish people. It is hard to say whether well-paid DEI executives are blind to the problem, or simply not up to the job of addressing it.

The NHS’s noble history includes the time of the Troubles when, in Northern Ireland, Catholic doctors worked on Protestant Unionists and vice versa because politics was left at the door. No longer. Our healthcare service has a sickness, but is anyone willing to talk about a cure?