Lord Weir: Patient safety 'at core' of Eljamel Inquiry

Patient safety “is and will be” at “the core” of the Eljamel Inquiry’s investigations, Lord Weir has said.

In a letter to MSPs, the Chair of the Eljamel Inquiry has provided reassurance about how the inquiry will go about its work.

Lord Weir said the Inquiry will be seeking evidence from the General Medical Council (GMC). He said it also expects to request evidence from the Health and Safety Executive (HSE).

The GMC is responsible for regulating doctors working in the UK. The HSE is the national regulator for workplace health and safety.

Both the GMC and the HSE are matters reserved to Westminster. This means the Eljamel Inquiry – as a Scottish inquiry – would be unable to make specific findings or recommendations relating to them. 

However, this does not prevent the Inquiry from gathering evidence.

The Eljamel Inquiry is investigating the professional practice and oversight of Sam Eljamel.

Mr Eljamel was a consultant neurosurgeon in NHS Tayside from 1995 until he was suspended in 2014.

The public inquiry was announced following concerns that hundreds of patients may have been harmed as a result of treatment carried out by Mr Eljamel.

Lord Weir said it “would be wrong, in my view, to interpret the absence of reference to health and safety law or the Health and Safety Executive in the Terms of Reference as meaning that the Inquiry is somehow precluded from considering patient safety at all”.

Lord Weir stressed that patient safety “is and will be” at the “core of the systemic investigation which the Inquiry is able and required to undertake”.

He added: “We do intend to seek evidence from the HSE in our investigations. 

"As to what that evidence will contain, that is a matter which will require to wait until the evidence from the HSE and others starts to emerge, which, as I have said, will inform where our investigations proceed thereafter.”

Lord Weir was responding to an email from MSPs Liz Smith, Michael Marra, and Willie Rennie.

Both the letter from Lord Weir and the email from MSPs have been published today on the Inquiry’s website.

Ms Smith said there had been “considerable disquiet” among some patients that the Inquiry’s Terms of Reference would not allow it to fully investigate the HSE and GMC.

The Inquiry’s Terms of Reference were fixed by the Cabinet Secretary for Health, Neil Gray, on April 3 2025.

Concerns have been raised that Mr Eljamel was able to remove his own name from the GMC’s medical register in 2015.

The Inquiry’s Terms of Reference will investigate the role played in this by NHS Tayside.  

Lord Weir said: “Evidence will also be sought from the GMC relevant to the investigation of bodies and individuals whose action or inaction does form part of the Terms of Reference, both as a matter of fact and as a matter of best practice.

“Though obtaining such evidence could not serve the purpose of making findings or recommendations about the role of the GMC itself, as I have explained above, its factual role will nonetheless have a bearing on any assessment of the adequacy of the steps taken by other individuals and bodies in connection with the practice of Mr Eljamel.”

The full correspondence can be found in the Key Documents section of the website and is also available to download below.