Piers Corbyn has been fined £250 after accusing NHS staff at a London Covid-19 vaccination clinic of murdering people.
The brother of the former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn had arrived with a group of anti-vaxxers at Guy’s hospital in central London on 18 January with a “cease and desist” letter that they claimed was to prevent NHS staff from administering the Covid-19 vaccine.
Corbyn told Chelsea Butcher, a nursing sister: “We are not leaving, you are murdering people here,” and another member of the group said, “This is a crime scene,” Westminster magistrates court heard.
Iestyn Morgan, prosecuting, said Corbyn, 75, and David Burridge, 44, from Hounslow, west London, refused to leave the hospital’s atrium despite requests from NHS staff and police.
At the trial, Corbyn, from Walworth, south-east London, said he had been arrested 15 times since the start of the pandemic, and he was “not there trying to obstruct people doing anything”.
The district judge Briony Clarke found the pair guilty of causing a nuisance or disturbance on NHS premises without reasonable excuse. “In my view, the defendants were there in order to try to stop the centre operating, hence the ‘cease and desist’ letter they were producing to the members of NHS staff,” Clarke said.
Corbyn was fined £250 and Burridge £200, and they were each ordered to pay a further £234 in costs and other charges.