Call For Doctors To Become Members Of Parliament, UK

Main Category: Primary Care / General Practice
Article Date: 22 Oct 2007 - 1:00 PDT

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In this week's BMJ, Steven Ford, a general practitioner in Northumberland, appeals for healthcare workers to stand as MPs and offer the electorate a better choice of health and other policies than those on offer from the established parties.

He himself intends to stand at the next general election.

Ours is a participatory democracy, he writes in this BMJ article. Membership of the hopelessly debt laden political parties is at an all time low, and the esteem in which parliament is held is likewise low. Could we make a change, he asks?

It is often noted that the public has more trust in doctors and other healthcare workers than in politicians. This is the right time, a last chance perhaps, to take our approval ratings out for a psephological test drive, he says.

We have witnessed problems arising from the healthcare "reforms" and can predict more of the same, he adds. And as a group we have been on the receiving end of much government inspired unpleasantness. If we are sincere in our reservations about the course proposed for health care in the United Kingdom, is it legitimate or excusable to do nothing, he asks?

With few exceptions, healthcare workers - not just doctors - are hard working, dynamic, committed, disposed to serve the community, of broadly liberal outlook, and of beneficent intent, he writes. These surely are the sorts of values that the electorate might care to see more widely represented in parliament. By comparison, parliamentarians are increasingly narrowly confined in their views on policy and preoccupied with party matters to the exclusion of governing effectively.

MPs are not better than the rest of us, he says, and do not deserve the unopposed scope for harm that the electorate has so far given them. Acquiescence is complicity - examine your conscience before discounting yourself as a candidate in your own constituency, he urges.

At the least, he concludes, an all constituency health professional candidacy will push the health issue up the political agenda, and that might promote fresh thinking and debate. It's time to put up or shut up.

Personal View: How to become an MP
BMJ Volume 335, p 826

http://www.bmj.com

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