Docs criticize GMC for investments in Nestlé and McDonald’s

Docs have criticized the Common Medical Council (GMC) after The BMJ discovered it had investments in quick meals corporations, pharmaceutical firms, personal medical insurers and personal healthcare suppliers.

A Freedom of Data request revealed that the regulator, which expenses UK docs £161 as a one off registration charge after which £420 in ongoing annual charges, has investments totaling practically £870,000 within the meals or smooth drink firms Nestlé, McDonald’s, Starbucks, Pepsico, Coca-Cola, and Unilever, which owns ice cream manufacturers Magnum, Wall’s, and Ben & Jerry’s.

It additionally invested greater than £1.2m in pharmaceutical firms, together with Novo Nordisk, AstraZeneca, Merck, and Roche, greater than £470,000 in personal insurance coverage or healthcare suppliers corresponding to Humana Well being and UnitedHealth Group, and greater than £1.3m in a variety of medical gadget producers together with Edwards LifeSciences, Thermo Fisher Scientific, and Intuitive Medical, the makers of the da Vinci robotic surgical system.

The regulator invests its cash by means of Church buildings, Charities and Native Authorities Funding Administration (CCLA). It instructed The BMJ that it has a say in what CCLA invests in and entry to all choices by means of CCLA’s reporting.

The GMC gave CCLA £50m to spend money on 2019, which as of January 2023 is price £81.3m made up of investments in firms, funds, personal fairness corporations, property, money and cash market securities (see a full checklist of the GMC’s investments right here).

Martin McKee, professor of European Public Well being on the London Faculty of Hygiene and Tropical Medication, stated, “Many docs whose work includes coping with the harms brought on by junk meals advertising would, in the event that they knew, despair at how their cash is being invested.”

Sam Everington, a Tower Hamlets GP and chair of Tower Hamlets Medical Commissioning Group added, “The GMC is funded by docs within the UK. They might be horrified to know that their cash is being invested in quick meals firms which can be the reason for a lot illness and decreased high quality and amount of life and considerably extra stress on the NHS and workload of docs. That is no totally different to investing in tobacco firms.”

Glasgow GP Margaret McCartney added, “Working towards UK docs don’t have any alternative however to pay substantial annual charges to the GMC. The group should present that it’s utilizing its funds properly and I am not satisfied it’s. It’s unclear to me why the GMC holds a lot cash and why it has chosen to speculate because it has. When the chief government is paid over 1 / 4 of 1,000,000 per yr, and an extra six workers on greater than £200,000, docs ought to know, with full transparency, the place their charges are being invested and why.”

A GMC spokesperson instructed The BMJ that as a registered charity it has an obligation to verify it protects and maintains the worth of its monetary belongings.

“We apply a variety of moral restrictions to the varieties of firms CCLA invests in on our behalf,” they stated. “This consists of services corresponding to tobacco, alcohol, pornography, playing and high-interest charge lending. As well as, we’re capable of exclude firms the place we’ve issues about their method to company tax.”

CCLA additionally avoids investing in firms concerned with the manufacturing of landmines, cluster munitions, and chemical and organic weapons or the extraction of thermal coal or tar sands, they added.

The funding coverage is reviewed yearly by the GMC’s Council and the spokesperson stated the regulator is contemplating whether or not the present exclusions stay related. The GMC can be contemplating publishing its investments on its web site after The BMJ identified that they weren’t displayed transparently.