PA photo
By
Hazel Speed
The NHS have been offering bribes to GPs (and who knows if others are also being similarly approached), in the hope they accept what they are being offered so that GPs will stop sending patients to hospitals, regardless of need.
The net is cast wide in that included within categories, are heart and cancer patients. Therefore a subsequent charge of culpable murder could result from compliance. If any individual or ordinary person were found to be guilty of trying to bribe anyone else, that no doubt would carry a legal consequence.
Obviously, both honourable GPs and Patients Groups are outraged, the doctors also adding a secondary point that it reflects on questioning their medical judgement in the first place, as if someone needs to go to hospital for whatever reason, then that is what should happen.
The key question is whether this was an initiative sponsored by the Government, and at the very least, the Opposition Party should be raising an urgent question in the House of Commons.
It would appear the NHS has the wrong leadership if this was condoned as official strategy.
If bribery is illegal, then the Police should be making arrests and ascertaining if any bribes were accepted, and by whom.
If it is alright for the NHS to bribe doctors (who can sign Passports and various legal documents, e.g. Continuing Power of Attorney), will it therefore mean that anyone arrested of bribery can just refer to the NHS as a precedent?
Illegal Immigrants wishing to register with a GP surgery, relatives seeking to have control over an ageing person for their money and property, drug addicts and pushers – what if they tried to bribe a GP for appropriate documentation or medicines; is any of that now fair game?
Can everyone become corrupt?
Hazel Speed
Photo (c) Hazel Speed – used by kind permision to Tuck Magazine
Thanks. A realistic portrayal.