Doctors’ regulator refused to investigate Harrods medical tests

The independent doctors’ regulator refused to investigate alleged medical malpractice at Harrods in 2017 because too much time had passed and it wasn’t “in the greater public interest”.

A woman who underwent an intimate medical examination in 2008 while applying for a job at Harrods complained to the General Medical Council (GMC) nine years later that former owner Mohamed Al Fayed had been told about her results.

The regulator, which can recommend doctors are banned from working, said it would not be able to investigate how the billionaire obtained the information.

On Friday, the GMC said it would “carefully assess” any new complaints, and described the Fayed revelations as “horrifying”.

Anthony Omo, general counsel and director of Fitness to Practise, said: “We will carefully assess any new concerns raised with us, and any existing information we hold, and will investigate and take action if we identify a risk to patients or public confidence.”

Many of the women interviewed for the BBC documentary and podcast Al-Fayed: Predator at Harrods said that when they had begun working for the luxury London department store they had undergone medicals, including invasive sexual health tests.

Al Fayed, who owned Harrods from 1985 until 2010 and died aged 94 last year, is accused of multiple rapes and sexual assaults by his former staff – many of whom have said they felt unable to report what had happened until recently.

The woman who made the complaint to the GMC in 2017 was given a medical as a requirement for applying for a job at the West London department store in 2008.

We are not publishing her name to protect her privacy, but she has shown us the resulting medical report, completed by the Harrods Occupational Health department, and correspondence from 2008 about the tests.

She provided a doctor with blood samples and was swabbed for sexually transmitted diseases.

“[The doctor] did a smear test. I had an infection and so she advised me on it and then she wrote a prescription for the pharmacy,” she told the BBC.

“I asked, explicitly, ‘This is all confidential, this is not going to be shared?'”

She said the doctor assured her it was “private”.

The doctor named in the documents as having carried out the tests was Dr Wendy Snell, who has since died.

“At some point, someone came and told me the chairman [Fayed] wanted to see me,” the woman said.

“They took me to his private office [and] sat me down.

She said Fayed was wearing a blue dressing gown: “I remember thinking it was cinematic and Hugh ‘Hefnerish’.

“He asked me about the day, and said ‘Got that thing taken care of?’”

She also said he asked her: “Did you pick up the thing?”

She believed that Harrods staff had told Fayed she had an infection and needed a prescription, alleging that her medical information was inappropriately shared.

She alleges Al Fayed then grabbed her face and tried to kiss her.

She did not take the job but in 2017, after hearing about other women coming forward raising concerns about Al Fayed’s sexual misconduct, she decided to make a complaint to the GMC about the doctors.

The GMC responded in November that year that it couldn’t investigate further.

In an email to her seen by the BBC, the GMC said: “An investigation can only be opened if the concerns raised are so serious that the doctor’s fitness to practise medicine is called into question to such an extent that action may be required to stop or restrict the way in which they can work to protect future patient safety.

“We cannot normally investigate concerns about incidents that happened more than five years ago, unless it is in the greater public interest to do so.

“In this case, the concerns you have raised about the doctors would not fulfil the criteria for us to waive that rule.

“We recognise that you are distressed that Mr Al Fayed knew about your medical history.

“However, we have no powers to investigate or resolve whether he was given that information by the doctors or if he obtained it by other means, especially after this passage of time.”

In response to her concerns about Dr Snell’s examination forming part of a job application, the GMC in the email concluded: “We have no powers to investigate, resolve or comment on whether a gynaecological examination should have formed part of your recruitment process.

“That is not our role. This would be an issue you would need to raise directly with Harrods.”

The woman who made the complaint about Dr Snell said at the time she was “angered and disappointed”, and she “shoved it away and avoided thinking about it”.

Now, after allegations against Al Fayed have come to light, she says she is “furious and frustrated”.

“It’s just another example of a missed opportunity to hold those who enabled Fayed to account.”

She believes the GMC should have considered the power held by Al Fayed and Harrods in making its decision.

“A minute level of investigation could have revealed major wrong doing,” she said.

In its response to the BBC on Friday, the GMC said the allegations against Al Fayed were “horrifying and shocking”.

It continued: “We know that in some cases victims and survivors of abuse may only feel in a position to report what happened to them many years later, and we take this into account when deciding whether we can investigate historic cases.

“As a regulator, we also have a responsibility to support all those raising a concern. We provide advice and support from our specially trained advisors to anyone who comes to us with a concern.”

Dr Snell was one of at least two doctors alleged to have performed intrusive examinations on Harrods recruits, and regular medicals during their employment.

The medical records passed by the 2017 complainant to the BBC show that they included screening for gonorrhoea and HIV.

The other, Dr Anne Coxon, has been named by many women who have come forward after the BBC documentary.

She has denied carrying out tests for sexually transmitted diseases while working for the luxury department store and its boss, Fayed.

Harrods’ current owners said they were “utterly appalled” by the allegations about Al Fayed and said that his victims had been failed – for which the store sincerely apologised.

It has said there is an ongoing internal review, which includes looking into whether current staff were involved in the allegations “directly or indirectly”.

The department store’s new owners have a compensation scheme for ex-employees who say they were attacked by Al Fayed, which is separate to the legal action being taken by some accusers.

A barrister from the Justice for Harrods Survivors group has told BBC 5 Live it has now been formally retained by 60 women, and it legal team is going through 200 inquiries – including some relating to Fulham Football Club, which Fayed owned between 1997 and 2013.

Fulham said last week it was “deeply troubled” to learn of the allegations and was in the process of establishing whether anyone at the club had been affected.

If you are affected by issues of sexual assault you can contact the BBC Action Line here.