GP Howard Stoate, who stood down at last election, says claim that he supported NHS reforms was 'entirely misleading'
Howard Stoate, the former Labour MP who left parliament to focus on his work as a GP, has attacked David Cameron for quoting him "out of context" on the government's health bill. The comments triggered heated exchanges during which Cameron told a female shadow cabinet member to "calm down, dear".
Stoate, the former MP for Dartford, writes in the Guardian that doctors do not "glibly accept every aspect of the health bill; it clearly has many inherent problems". He says Cameron "should stop using the health service as a political football and allow GPs to get on with the job of improving health services".
"I [had] said many GPs were enthusiastic about the chance to help shape services for patients," he writes. "I was referring to GPs in my own borough of Bexley, south London, and qualified this by saying GPs in the borough had a head start, building on their experience of commissioning over the last four years. Taken out of context, and interspersed with condescending comments to backbench MPs, Cameron's quote is entirely misleading."
With senior Labour figures claiming the prime minister lost his cool because he has lost "the argument over the NHS", the intervention by Stoate? the only practising GP to serve in parliament when he stood down at the general election ? robs Andrew Lansley, the health secretary, of a line of attack: that the government reforms have high-profile defenders in the medical profession.
In his blog, Alastair Campbell, Tony Blair's former director of communications and strategy, said Cameron was rattled over the dispatch box because of the unpopularity of the coalition's reforms. "The plans are not thought through, not popular with those who run the NHS or those who use it, and politically toxic, not least because they have no mandate for them," he said.
Cameron laughed off the row on an election campaign visit to North Wales. He said: "Don't worry, I'm not going to tell you to calm down. I don't know what it is about some people on the left. It seems that when they put the socialism in, they take the sense of humour out.
"I got home last night and my wife said to me 'What sort of day did you have, dear?' And I told her I was attacked by Harriet Harman and defended by Michael Winner and she said 'What on earth were you up to?'"
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2011/apr/28/david-cameron-howard-stoate-nhs
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