Liz Smith: Eljamel patients deserve justice and I will continue to fight for it

Liz Smith has roots in Conservative politics that date back to her teenage years. First handing out leaflets for Malcolm Rifkind in his Edinburgh Pentlands constituency, having taught his daughter, and then working for three years on his policy commission to understand why the Conservatives had been so badly defeated in the 1997 general election, she also went onto to work with the late Michael Ancrum and former Scottish Conservative leader David McLetchie, forming vital relationships with key figures in the party early on. 

She describes those men as having been her biggest influences in politics, not just for their intelligence and debating skills, but for their respect and ability to work with people across the chamber.  

It’s a lesson Smith has put into practice with Liberal Democrat MSP Willie Rennie and Labour MSP Michael Marra as they campaigned for justice for the victims of Professor Sam Eljamel. 

Smith speaks to Holyrood six weeks after the launch of the public inquiry into Eljamel’s actions began. It’s the culmination of 11 years of researching the malpractice of the neurosurgery consultant and campaigning in the Scottish Parliament for justice.    

The disgraced consultant was suspended by NHS Tayside in 2013 after he harmed an unknown number of patients during surgeries dating back years. However, four years earlier, issues of his practice and competence had been raised with the health board by patients and whistleblowers working within the service, yet ultimately no action was taken to prevent any further harm until his suspension. He was allowed to voluntarily remove himself from the General Medical Council’s register and now works as a surgeon in Libya.  

Eljamel has drastically impacted the lives of more than 100 patients who live with the physical and mental trauma inflicted on them under his care. But the truth is the real number of people who were impacted could be much higher. Smith describes it as “the most horrific story”.  

Last year, then-health secretary Michael Matheson commissioned the public inquiry into the oversight of NHS Tayside. It was a move the Scottish Government was initially against, but that changed when Matheson told MSPs last September that a review undertaken by NHS Tayside, which revealed Eljamel operated on 111 patients between being placed under investigation in mid-2013 and being suspended in December the same year, had changed his mind. 

Smith, who won the Holyrood Garden Party & Political Awards Political Hero award for her work campaigning on behalf of the victims, says her work on the issue is “about getting justice and truth for the victims of this appalling surgeon”.  

It was first brought to her attention by Patrick Kelly, who almost died in 2007 after a spinal operation performed by Eljamel. He has now been left in constant pain without the possibility of another back operation and has been told due to continued deconditioning he will lose five years of his life. Although Kelly was not a constituent of Smith and she was unable to take on the casework, his story sparked her research into what had happened at Ninewells Hospital. 

Soon after, Jules Rose, a constituent of Smith’s who has been at the forefront of campaigning for a public inquiry, and who had one of her tear ducts removed instead of a tumour, got in contact. The communication in the years since has been near-constant, and at times daily, Smith tells me. 

“Through her, I started meeting a lot of people from Mid Scotland and Fife [who had been affected]. I started putting together all the evidence I could muster, not just from my constituents, but what was being reported by the press.  

“I was investigating Eljamel and NHS Tayside and putting together a timeline of what happened.” 

She continues: “I became increasingly concerned that there had been serious breaches of what I would call theatre protocol. You listen to some of the patients, they talk about notes not being taken properly and different body parts being removed when they shouldn’t have been. It was building up into this awful picture of malpractice.  

“There were far too many stories of this, and I became incredibly anxious about what I was hearing.” 

As she reflects on the 11 years of ongoing campaigning, Smith stresses the need for better protections for whistleblowers within the health services and says there must be “much better rigour and discipline” running large public authorities. 

“We cannot have a situation whereby if somebody flags up grave concerns about a surgeon, not once, but many times, that that person is allowed to continue. NHS Tayside knew about the patient complaints against Eljamel but didn’t really do anything. I find that completely unacceptable. 

“Aside from getting justice for the patients, I hope the one thing that comes from this inquiry is that we stop this from ever happening again.” 

She points to “the systemic” failures within the health board, lamenting that not just complaints from patients were made to it, but also by staff. She describes a “lack of transparency over how patients were being dealt with”.  

“That is also a big concern to me because I think that allows the conclusion that at one time NHS Tayside had systemic failure within its administration and of its governance.” 

Smith, along with Marra, Rennie and other MSPs, joined dozens of other victims outside of the Scottish Parliament in September last year to hold a protest over the Scottish Government’s reluctance to grant a public inquiry. It was a graphic display in which victims wore hospital gowns and two people reenacted a blood-soaked theatre operation. 

Being there in person, it was striking how badly affected the victims of Eljamel are by his malpractice. While protestors in unison repeated the need for an inquiry, some were unable to fight back the tears. 

However, despite the government “dragging its heels at times”, overall Smith says the Scottish Government has been “very supportive” and says it has tried to “help the process on” for the most part. 

“Who can deny, given all of the ghastly stories that came from the Eljamel situation? You can’t possibly sweep this under the carpet. It’s horrific, and these people deserve justice, and I will continue to fight to get that justice.” 

She is optimistic about the public inquiry, which opened last month, and says she has been “very impressed” by Lord Weir, who leads the inquiry, and Jamie Dawson KC as counsel. But she maintains that the campaign for justice “is not finished yet”.  

Having seen firsthand the devastation Eljamel’s actions have left his patients in, I ask Smith if she thinks it’s possible their trust in the health service can ever be regained.  

“It is exceptionally difficult, given the severity of the physical and mental illness that they suffer from now. I don’t think you’ll ever bring full closure. 

“But I think if the public inquiry uncovers and addresses why this happened and who is responsible, it will be a long step in the right direction.” 

To add to Smith’s recent success in fighting for the victims of Eljamel, she has long been a voice calling for the improvement of education standards in Scotland’s schools. It’s been a busy few weeks as she introduced her Member’s Bill, the Schools (Residential Outdoor Education)(Scotland) Bill, at the beginning of this month.  

Having been a teacher a George Watson’s College for 16 years, teaching economics and modern studies, as well as having represented Scotland in cricket, she says she placed a great emphasis on outdoor teaching, something she argues has fallen by the wayside in recent years.  

Smith describes it as “a very important part of education” that’s “not easily measured”. While the Scottish Government does not keep specific figures on residential outdoor learning, a recent study by the University of Edinburgh shows that only a third of secondary pupils and a quarter of primary school children benefit from it.  

“Particularly, I want to see children from disadvantaged backgrounds benefitting from it because the benefits are so huge for deprived communities, and I think it is completely and utterly wrong that they don’t receive the same benefits that their counterparts from higher income families do get.” 

We discuss the future, namely the state of her party, which is undergoing a period of change. Douglas Ross’s poor judgement to run at the general election at the eleventh hour ultimately sparked a leadership contest that was won by former journalist Russell Findlay, who has promised to unite the party. Smith backed Murdo Fraser, arguing that her party had to be a “strong centre-right party”.  

Despite not gaining her backing, Findlay has given her the social security brief, and during a keynote speech in Edinburgh at the end of last month he pointed to the need for someone with a background in economics to challenge what he described as “a freebie culture” from the SNP-led government. 

Smith says the important question is “what can we afford to pay for?” She has been writing for months that there is a big question over universal payments and says it’s time to debate “on what criteria” the government decides on issues like the winter fuel payment, free prescription, bus fares, and free school meals.  

“If you look at the Scottish Fiscal Commission statistics, it’s terrifying the amount of money we are going to have to find for social security, social care and health spending. And Scotland is raising nowhere near enough revenue to facilitate all that.  

“That begs the question, do you tax people to the hilt to get that money? We already have a very high tax economy and that’s putting people off. It begs the question about universal payments, should we be paying universal benefits to everyone, including those that can well afford it?” 
She says it will be “really interesting” to see what happens when Shona Robison delivers the Scottish Budget in December after the UK Budget “has fallen apart pretty quickly”.  

Looking ahead to the Scottish Parliament election in 2026, the Scottish Conservatives face a new battle from the right. The challenge from Reform UK is one that she says her party is “concerned” about. The most recent polling from Norstat shows support for the Tories, who picked up almost 24 per cent of the regional list vote, and  returned 26 of the 31 MSPs won at the 2021 election, is suggested to be cut to 14 per cent, while Reform sits at 11 per cent.  

“We are concerned about making sure that we get across a much more positive agenda on what we would like to deliver.  

“It has been all well and good saying we are a unionist party, that stood us very well from 2014 onwards, but that threat of independence is not as strong as it was, although that’s not to say that it has disappeared.  

“But we will not get through the political stages if we are just talking about being anti-something. We have to be pro-something. People quite rightly want to ask what it is we stand for. And if we don’t do that, we aren’t going to do very well.  

“This is the first time we have had the threat from the left-of-centre parties as well as the right-of-centre, and we could easily get squeezed in the middle, so we have got to address that. We have to be seen to be relevant and talking the language of people in Scotland who want their own daily lives to be improved.” 

Smith tells Holyrood that she thinks politics “has lost its integrity to a lot of people”. She says while a lot of that lack of trust is in part due to social media and the speed in which it moves, “too many politicians have not been behaving very well”.  

“We lost the general election badly because we had lost that relevance and we had also, unfortunately, attracted a label for incompetence over the economy whether it was a combination of Liz Truss and Boris Johnson. We have got to win that back.”