Over the last three days I have been shocked by the
comments made by Telford MP Lucy Allan against junior doctors both in tweets
she has made and in a statement she made on her website.
On 27th April she tweeted:
Junior doctors: privileged young people, with tax payer
funded training, who will become well paid consultants. #putpatientsfirst
@TheBMA ’
In a statement made on her website yesterday she ended
by saying:
“Having been afforded excellent life opportunities,
junior doctors are holding the British public to ransom. People need to look
past the lines being trotted out by the BMA to justify this action and question
what is the real motive for these strikes.”
I am stunned
by and ashamed of Lucy Allan’s comments because she is my MP and she has got
her facts so horribly wrong.
The one
profession I admire more than any other is the medical profession. This is
something I could never do myself and I thank God that there are people who
want to train and become doctors. There is a common saying that we trot out - ‘it is not a matter of life or death’. Well,
in the medical profession it often is a matter of life or death and in
my view there is no greater responsibility than having someone’s life in your
hands.
My family
and I have had first-hand experience of hospital care with the NHS. We have
found that doctors and nurses have always done a fantastic job, but it is clear that there
is a shortage of resources. In my view the National Health Service is one of
this country’s greatest assets but significant investment is needed to protect
this valuable asset.
Comments such
as those made by Lucy Allan and the way in which this Government are mishandling the junior doctors' contracts will have the effect of making many doctors move abroad or change careers and will deter
new doctors from entering the profession. We already have a crisis in the NHS
through underfunding but the position will only get worse with a growing shortage
of doctors.
I do not
understand why Lucy Allan is so spiteful in her attacks on junior doctors. She is clearly wrong in what she has said as
has been quickly pointed out by many irate junior doctors and also in some cases their parents.
Many junior doctors
are not from privileged backgrounds, many are not ‘young’ (whatever Lucy Allan’s
definition of young may be), many have huge debts through funding themselves through
medical training and many do not go on to be well paid consultants.
I do not agree that junior
doctors are holding the British public to ransom. Many of them have pointed out
that they would earn a lot more under the new contracts the Government is
seeking to impose but those doctors are still against the contracts because
they are worried about patients’ safety and about making sure the NHS is not dismantled.
Lucy Allan
has to date not retracted her comments or issued an apology. Her track record
of being in office has shown that she often deletes comments she regrets making
but she generally does not apologise or admit that she is wrong.
I am afraid that Lucy Allan has a track record of making
unsubstantiated allegations. For
example, she has made absurd claims about local councillors’ behaviour and she has alleged that she did not make up
the words ‘Unless you die’ when she added them to a constituent’s email to make
it appear as if he wished her dead. In
both of these examples she has failed to provide evidence to support her claims.
Following her attack on junior doctors Lucy Allan
has been challenged by many people, including a large number from the medical profession, to
provide evidence to support her claims but, predictably, she has largely ignored those
claims and failed to provide the evidence.
I want to
reassure junior doctors that many people in Telford, as well as myself, find Lucy
Allan’s comments disgraceful. If it is any consolation, and I hope it will be
to those reading this blog, the last paragraph of this article fromTotal Politics from 3 months ago stated :
‘But the member of the
2015 intake who has caused the biggest headache for the Tory leadership and
generated the most controversy yet is Lucy Allan…..
...Rather than climbing
the ministerial ladder, Tory sources suggest that Allan may have to instead
focus on fighting off deselection threats as the next election approaches’.
Neil Phillips
