Radio ham who streamed NHS pager messages via webcam may have committed a crime

In the UK, it's illegal to listen to radio traffic for which you are not the intended recipient, so yes, it seems the ham committed a crime. But at the same time it sheds light on a very GDPR non-compliant method of transmitting PII and other patient data that can be read by anyone.

The pagers don't use encryption and are clear-text after a trivial demodulation process.

The same type of system is used in the States, where SSNs, names, symptoms, diseases, and the like are regularly transmitted via pager.

Pagers work well in the medical community to disseminate information rapidly and reliably, but at the expense of patient privacy.