Nurse who said UK is ‘no place’ for Muslims struck off

A nurse who wrote on Facebook after last summer’s Southport attack that there should be “no place” for Muslims in the UK has been struck off.

Simon Watts was employed by medical care provider Mitie to work at Norfolk and Suffolk Police when he made the social media post in August 2024.

He said “this country has so many nasty immigrants wanting to spread hatred and violence”, according to a Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) tribunal judgment.

He admitted writing the posts and accepted he should not have done so. The panel found that his actions had brought the profession into disrepute and amounted to serious misconduct.

Three young children died in the Southport attack while eight other children and two adults were seriously wounded. Axel Rudakubana was sentenced to a minimum of 52 years in prison for the attack.

A few days after the killings, Watts wrote that the UK was “not a Muslim country” and that “this country is finished due to lack of immigration control”.

His post included comments “specifically relating” to the attack, the ruling noted, as disorder spread across the UK in the wake of the murders amid false rumours posted online that the killer was a Muslim immigrant.

As an “experienced nurse of 30 years” who has worked with a “vast variety of patients from all backgrounds”, Watts’s behaviour was “completely unacceptable and extremely serious”, the NMC panel said.

It said he had displayed “limited insight” into the issues raised and there was a “significant risk” he would repeat his behaviour.

The panel made an order to strike his name from the register following an 18-month suspension order to cover a potential appeal period.