AS A family doctor who has worked in the same north London practice for 30 years, Dr Chaand Nagpaul is the kind of local physician most communities can only dream of. His scrupulous attention to the micro needs of his patients also informs and enhances his very
public role as chair of the BMA Medical Council – a position that makes him the leading spokesperson for the UK’s thousands of GPs.
In this capacity, his role is to articulate the concerns of his profession to the government and be a major voice in the national debate around healthcare.
Given the unprecedented crisis the NHS is now facing in maintaining doctor numbers and the public outcry over the shortfall, Nagpaul is not slow to pin the blame for the shortage firmly where he believes it belongs.
Pointing out that the NHS currently has 10,000 unfilled medical vacancies, he tells Power List the problem will only get worse if the Government does not end the “punitive” and “disastrous” way doctors’ pensions are taxed.
“If they cover a session for another GP or a shift to reduce a waiting list – this extra work could tip them over the edge and even an extra £1 earned could result in an additional tax bill of over £13,000.”
He adds: “The Government wants us to pay up to tens of thousands to go to work, with some doctors re-mortgaging their homes. That’s the effect of the perverse and punitive pensions rules being imposed on many of our most experienced colleagues, forced to retire, to reduce their workload, to stop covering shifts by a decision made in Whitehall. The Treasury is taxing doctors out of the NHS and seriously undermining patient care. It must act now to avert a workforce meltdown.”
Elected by his peers in 2017 to the pivotal role he now occupies within the BMA after a working lifetime of activism on the professional association’s behalf, he has not been reticent either about using his platform to address the overall issue of NHS funding.
Speaking at the annual BMA conference on June 24 this year, an event widely reported in the press and on TV, he said: “If the Government seriously wants to ensure patient safety it must fund the NHS properly – we haven’t the money for enough staff, beds, and facilities. As a result, the Government is unashamedly breaking its promise in the NHS Constitution to the people of England.”
A passionate believer in universal healthcare, Nagpaul can remember being attracted to medicine as a career at a very early age: “There is a photo of me at the age of five looking so proud with a toy doctor’s set including a stethoscope. It was an early ambition.”
He originally planned to become a specialist hospital doctor but changed his mind while still a student after observing a GP trainer “working magic with patients whose lives and circumstances he knew and understood and who trusted him implicitly.”
Given the funding shortcomings, does he believe the NHS is still the ‘envy of the world’? “Absolutely. We should be proud that we have a health system in which anyone, regardless of who they are, can receive care free at the point of access.”
