Letters: Doctors can work out what Hunt is up to

These letters appear in the 10th Febuary edition of The Independent

The Health Secretary answers questions in the House of Commons (Crown copyright)

The British Medical Association has not “spread misinformation” to junior doctors, as Jeremy Hunt has claimed. Yet even if it had it wouldn’t have made a blind bit of difference.

Doctors, like all scientists, are trained in the analysis and interpretation of evidence. Evidence to support a diagnosis, evidence for a new pharmaceutical’s efficacy, evidence that one operation may be safer than another. This list goes on.

The privilege of possessing these skills, is that no longer are you shackled to the inherent bias of another person’s discourse – you can form an independent judgment. The contracts issue is a case in point.

Jeremy Hunt’s caustic implication that we follow, like gospel, the BMA’s every word, is not only an affront the profession, but simply untrue. We’ve read the “new deal” and we’ve critiqued the data; we didn’t vote to walk out en masse by sway of the BMA. They remain, as they should, as facilitators of our cause.

Jeremy Hunt’s apparent disposition to disseminate such pernicious propaganda is provoking threats of the most significant disbandment and emigration of doctors since – ironically enough – talk of establishing the NHS.

Dr Benjamin Kirk

Lowestoft, Suffolk

Jeremy Hunt has a degree in politics, philosophy and economics from Oxford. As our health minister he has no qualification in science nor medicine.

Even with one third of an undergraduate degree in economics, it should not be beyond him to comprehend that if he has a diminishing supply of producers of widgets, he should do all that he can to retain those that remain and not goad them into leaving.

His previous exploits include trying to (unsuccessfully) sell marmalade to the Japanese. Past performance is not necessarily a guide to the future, but maybe he should try this again as this is clearly where his skills lie. It would be safer for the future health care of our nation.

Dr Paul Baird

Weymouth

Junior doctors are fighting the Government not just because the new contract will jeopardise patient safety and impact on doctors’ quality of life. We are fighting to save the NHS.

If the Government is allowed to impose its proposed contract changes on junior doctors, a precedent will be set. Soon they will be attacking nurses, physios, paramedics and all other healthcare workers.

The NHS is already running on the goodwill of those of us who work in it. If the public want our NHS to survive, everyone must get behind junior doctors and send the Government a message that healthcare workers are not there to be attacked, derided and taken advantage of.

Dr Jonathan Barnes

London N4

We still have too many women in prison

Prison for many women is expensive and ineffective and exacerbates the challenges they have already experienced in life, including childhood abuse, mental ill health, poverty, homelessness and domestic violence. While we welcome the commitment from David Cameron, in his statement on prison policy, to enable greater use of community sentencing for new mothers, we urge the Government to ensure this amounts to an investment in more than tagging, and extends to understanding the current injustice for all women in prison.

The last year has seen the highest rate in self-inflicted deaths in the women’s prison estate since Baroness Corston’s investigation into the treatment of vulnerable women in prison published in 2007. Already this year another two women have taken their own lives. Behind the prison gates self-harming rates for women are still soaring. Too many women are in prison, when they pose no harm to others, only themselves.

Many specialist organisations providing services to women affected by the criminal justice system face a struggle for funding. This has not been helped by the upheaval caused by recent changes to the probation service. We urge the Government to consider the value of reducing the number of women in prison by 50 per cent by 2020 and invest in the specialist long-term community support women and their families need so they can rebuild their lives and the lives of their children.

Kate Paradine

Chief Executive, Women in Prison

Deborah Coles

Director, INQUEST

Jackie Russell

Director, Women’s Breakout

London N1

Brexit means a horde of expat pensioners

About a million expatriate Britons live in Europe. Many of these will have retired to sunnier climes, not gone there to work.

If Britain leaves the EU, thereby blocking the free movement of productive workers from Europe coming here, there is no reason why retired Britons should be allowed to remain in their chosen EU country.

A situation could easily arise where hundreds of thousands of pensioners would be forced to return to the UK, creating chaos in housing and social provision. As such pensioners would have retired to cheaper, warmer, areas and bought homes there, a glut of their houses on the local market would depress prices so that they would have insufficient funds to buy even a modest house in the UK.

There is already a crisis in care for the frail elderly in this country and the prospect of hordes (the pejorative term beloved of Europhobes) of pensioners descending on an already stretched system could be catastrophic.

This is something worth thinking about before casting a vote in favour of Brexit.

Patrick Cleary

Honiton, Devon

Mr Cameron worries about immigration following Brexit, but he is looking in the wrong direction. If leaving the EU were to lead ultimately to an independent Scotland with relaxed immigration policies, he would find England’s northern counties much more difficult to defend than Kent.

Don Newton

Oxford

The EU referendum will be an event of the most profound consequence. It will decide the fate of a complex, geographically diverse, socially weird, politically divided and extraordinarily pluralistic nation (if indeed, you can imagine the UK into a nation).

According to Isabel Hardman (5 February) it is being driven by the disgruntlement of a few Tory MPs and party activists. These latter are few, usually prosperous, often ageing, and hardly representative in any wise of nation. That Cameron should risk all our futures to placate this tiny constituency is beyond shocking.

Michael Rosenthal

Banbury, Oxfordshire

The wrong kind of gay men

The pressure to fit a stereotype came about as a defence mechanism, I have been told (“Gay men ‘under too much pressure to fit stereotypes’”, 9 February). But the pressure comes as much from other gay men as anywhere else.

When I first came out and went to the gay clubs in London, a gay man of about my current age told me that gay men’s biggest enemies are fellow gays – “vicious, spiteful load of bitches” was his description. I thought he was too cynical. Now that I am an old age pensioner I know he was right.

I was once being harassed at work (an FE college) by two young gay men. They would not accept I was a “real” gay because I was not camp and loud like them. I asked for help from my gay MP because I did not want to involve the police, and the college would not help me. I was told I was the “wrong sort of gay” to be helped.

Gay friends of mine include several ex-military men, who lift weights, wear camouflage gear, run and go shooting with their large dogs. They didn’t get help either when exposed to homophobic discrimination.

We eventually turned to the police, who acted. The “establishment gays” now file us as “traitors” to fellow gay men.

David Critchard

Exeter

Shock Trump into silence

If Adele does not wish her songs to be played by Donald Trump on his march to the White House, all she need do is be quoted as saying, “I’m more popular than Jesus Christ right now.” No Republican will play her songs at a rally and her CDs will be burnt in the streets by all right-thinking folk. It’s happened before.

Bob Fennell

Bromley, Kent

When dogs fall for the demon drink

Your report (8 February) of the research into links between canine intelligence and human health ended with the observation by researcher Dr Rosalind Arden that “dogs offer a good insight because they are basically teetotal”.

“Basically teetotal”? Just how closely, then, were the test subjects watched? Dr Arden seems to be implying that one or two might have strayed from sobriety – sneaking in a swift pint at the Rover’s Return, perhaps.

Jeremy Redman

London SE6