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Keir Starmer has ordered a review of antisemitism in the NHS, saying “clear cases” are not being dealt with.
The UK prime minister said Lord John Mann, the government’s independent adviser on antisemitism, would lead the review as part of a wider crackdown on antisemitism in the UK.
During a visit to the Community Security Trust (CST), which monitors antisemitism and provides protection for Jewish communities in the UK, the prime minister also announced £10m would be provided for security for Jewish amenities, including synagogues and schools.
He said: “We have heard loud and clear in the last few days and weeks that words are not enough, action is what matters.”
Announcing Lord Mann’s review at the CST, Starmer added: “Lord Mann is going to do a review of the NHS for us. There are just too many examples, clear examples, of antisemitism that have not been dealt with adequately or effectively.
“So we need to do that review. We’ve already put in place management training in relation to the NHS, but I think we need a wider review, because in some cases, clear cases are simply not being dealt with, and so we need to get to the root of that.”
Starmer also said universities had been “too slow” in dealing with cases of antisemitism, singling out the University of Oxford, which is understood to have suspended a student on Wednesday after he was arrested on suspicion of inciting racial hatred.
The student is alleged to have chanted for Gaza to “put the Zios in the ground” during a protest in London on Saturday. Starmer said: “Look at Oxford this week. That was a slow reaction to the clearest of cases.”
Starmer’s visit comes in the wake of the terrorist attack at the Heaton Park synagogue in Manchester on 2 October that left two men dead.
Statistics released by the Home Office last week suggest antisemitic hate crime remains near record levels. The prime minister said: “The figures are all going in the wrong direction. And it’s not just the figures, it’s the feeling of insecurity and the fear that it instils in our community.”
In a separate review published in July, Lord Mann and the former Conservative minister Penny Mordaunt warned of rising antisemitism across British society, including a “specific unaddressed issue” within the NHS.
The home secretary, Shabana Mahmood, who accompanied the prime minister to the CST on Thursday, said she was reviewing protest legislation and providing additional police protection outside synagogues and other locations.
But she said the “bigger question” was how to improve community cohesion so that Jewish children could “go to school without learning what a lockdown is”.
Mark Gardner, the chief executive of the CST, said the meeting had been “very straightforward and very productive”, adding: “We don’t want to live behind high walls for the rest of our lives.”
The UK government says it will also look at how best to support Muslim communities in the face of rising Islamophobic hate crime.
