Andrew Neil Hopper

Introduction

Andrew Neil Hopper is a British doctor who was erased from the medical register held by the General Medical Council (GMC) following a Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service (MPTS) determination. The case against him arose not from professional misconduct in a clinical setting, but from criminal convictions for large-scale insurance fraud and for possessing extreme pornographic images. A Medical Practitioners Tribunal found his fitness to practise was impaired by reason of his conviction, and in May 2026 it determined that his name should be erased from the register — the sanction commonly described as being struck off.

Background Information

Dr Hopper was registered with the General Medical Council under registration number 4721550. Before the events that ended his medical career, he had suffered below-knee amputations. According to the determination, the fraud he later committed centred on misrepresenting the cause of those amputations to insurance providers: he claimed the amputations were the result of illness when, as he later admitted in court, they were self-inflicted injuries. That misrepresentation became the foundation of insurance claims made to two providers, totalling over £460,000. The MedicWatch record of the case was compiled from the publicly published MPTS determination and contains no additional biographical detail about his medical speciality, employer, or place of training.

The Controversy or Incident That Led to Their Cancellation

Adjudicated vs. alleged. The conviction and sentence in this case are court-adjudicated criminal facts: on 4 September 2025, at Truro Crown Court, Andrew Neil Hopper was convicted — on his own guilty pleas — of two counts of fraud by false representation and three counts of possession of extreme pornographic images portraying an act likely to result in serious injury to a person’s private parts, and was sentenced to 32 months’ imprisonment and a 10-year Sexual Harm Prevention Order. By contrast, the Tribunal’s conclusions that his fitness to practise is impaired, its gradings of the seriousness of the convictions, and its assessment that he presents an extremely high risk are findings of a regulatory tribunal made on the civil standard — not criminal findings, and not a re-trial of the offences.

The criminal conduct fell into two strands. The first was dishonesty: Hopper made insurance claims to two providers totalling over £460,000, in which he represented that his below-knee amputations had been caused by illness rather than by self-inflicted injury. The second concerned unlawful material: he possessed extreme pornographic images portraying an act likely to result in serious injury to a person’s private parts. On 4 September 2025, at Truro Crown Court, he was convicted of two counts of fraud by false representation and three counts of possession of such images, and the conviction was recorded as being on his guilty pleas — he admitted the allegation before the court. The sentence imposed was 32 months’ imprisonment, together with a Sexual Harm Prevention Order lasting 10 years.

Once convicted and sentenced, Hopper faced a substantive hearing before a Medical Practitioners Tribunal, sitting from 27 May 2026 to 29 May 2026, which considered whether his fitness to practise was impaired by reason of that conviction and, if so, what sanction should follow. The allegation before the Tribunal concerned precisely those criminal convictions, and Hopper admitted it; the Tribunal found the allegation proved.

Public Reaction and Consequences

The determination itself does not record public commentary, press coverage, or social-media reaction to the case, and none is invented here. The consequences documented are institutional. The Tribunal found that Hopper’s fitness to practise was impaired by reason of his conviction. In assessing seriousness, it determined that the possession of extreme pornography convictions fell at the extreme high end of the spectrum of seriousness, and the dishonesty and fraud at the high end, noting that the behaviour was premeditated and repeated. The Tribunal found that Hopper had shown no meaningful insight into the impact of his behaviour on public protection and no remediation, and that all three parts of public protection were engaged, presenting an extremely high risk. The immediate, concrete consequence of the conviction was the custodial sentence and the 10-year Sexual Harm Prevention Order imposed by the Crown Court.

Current Status

Andrew Neil Hopper has been erased from the medical register — struck off — and is no longer permitted to practise as a doctor in the UK. Erasure is otherwise indefinite: it can be reviewed after a minimum of five years, but until any such review restores him, his removal from the register stands. The custodial sentence of 32 months imposed at Truro Crown Court in September 2025 and the 10-year Sexual Harm Prevention Order remain the criminal-law consequences of his convictions.

Impact on Their Career/Life

The MPTS determination of 29 May 2026 ended Hopper’s medical career in the UK: erasure from the GMC register means he cannot practise medicine, and the Tribunal’s findings of no meaningful insight and no remediation, together with its assessment of extremely high risk, leave his return conditional on a review that cannot occur before the minimum five-year period. Separately, his criminal convictions carry a 32-month prison term and a decade-long Sexual Harm Prevention Order, and the Tribunal’s grading of the offences — extreme high for the pornography convictions and high for the fraud, with the behaviour described as premeditated and repeated — marks the conduct as among the most serious of its kind. All such findings are the Tribunal’s, made to the civil standard; the adjudicated criminal facts remain the pleas, the convictions, and the sentence.

Sources

• MedicWatch, “Andrew Neil Hopper — Struck off the register · 29 May 2026,” 29 May 2026.source