To the Secretary, Infected Blood Inquiry Thank you for your letter of 26 May 2021. I am disappointed by your position to deny access to the public hearings, and by your reasoning. As you correctly state, the MHRA authorises (Innova)…
Misuse of lateral flow tests
An email sent to Dr June Raine, chief executive of the Medicines & Healthcare products Regulatory Agency23 May 2021 Dear Dr June Raine, I am writing to draw your attention to the ways in which the government is expanding the…
Integrated care systems
Roderick P, Pollock AM. A new bill to reform the NHS in England: the wrong proposals at the wrong time. BMJ Opinion 11 Feb 2021.
Write to your local MPs, councillors, and mayors
COVID-19 contact tracing – BMJ editorial Please see a BMJ editorial which I co-authored on contact tracing, out just this afternoon. Please consider asking your MPs and other national representatives, local councillors, and mayors to persuade the government to follow…
The proposed National Health Service Reinstatement Bill, July 2018 – explanatory notes
These notes are intended to explain the Bill that was provided to Eleanor Smith, MP for Wolverhampton South West, for presentation in the House of Commons on 11th July 2018. [download pdf] Overview In short, the Bill proposes to fully…
Judicial review judgement: the campaign moves on
Today the High Court handed down its judgement on the judicial review we brought against the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care and NHS England on their introduction of Accountable Care Organisations (ACOs). We had originally brought our…
Open letter to Jeremy Hunt on the 69th anniversary of the NHS
This first appeared on the Huffington Post 05 July 2017 Dear Mr Hunt The 69th anniversary today of the National Health Service is a timely but sad occasion on which to draw your attention to the end of the service…
Note on children’s rugby injury data
Listeners to More or Less on BBC Radio 4 have asked where I got the data to make the points that rugby players up to the age of 18 or 19 had a 28% chance of getting injured over a…
Why I wrote to the government to ask them to remove the tackle from school rugby and put in place injury surveillance
(This blog was first published on Better Health For All (the blog of the Faculty of Public Health) on 08 March 2015) On 2nd March 2016, along with 70 other academics, doctors, and public health professionals, I wrote an open…
Risk of privatisation of the Scottish NHS in the event of a no vote
The Coalition Government abolished the public NHS in England when it passed the Health and Social Care Act in 2012. This Act didn’t directly affect the NHS in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, but could have grave long-term consequences for…