To the Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service (MPTS) and General Medical Council (GMC),

We are patients and members of the UK public. We want to express our wholehearted support for medical professional charged with minor criminal offences as a result of their climate activism, such as Dr Sarah Benn and others. We urge you to keep their licences to practice and to publicly support their right to engage on the issues.

We all want to be able to trust medical staff to do the best for their patients. The climate crisis is causing multiple harms and is a health crisis too. Thousands of people die unnecessarily in the UK every year due to cold, inefficient homes, which could and should be insulated. Even more die or suffer ill health due to air pollution. Millions are dying or displaced around the world by wildfires, floods and other climate disasters. We know that the cost of inaction on climate is far greater than the cost of action. Yet, our politicians and fossil fuel companies are dragging their heels over the urgent need to reduce carbon emissions.

We believe that everyone in a position of a trusted messenger, such as medical professionals, has a duty of care to act on the existential threat of a runaway climate change. Not to do so is against patients' interest. Taking licences away from those who have acted would be unconscionable.

If you don't want to lose public trust as the bodies charged with ensuring good medical conduct, you need to support the doctors and nurses acting on the science and their conscience. We can't afford to lose them - and neither can the public health service which is in crisis itself. If anything, we need many more speaking out and taking direct action until the whole nation follows suit in pursuing a low carbon, healthier and more equitable future. Please make it easier for them to do so by removing the threat of being struck off.