100 doctors make protest march

Press, Volume CXII, Issue 33077, 18 November 1972, Page 15

100 doctors make protest march

(N.Z.P.A. Staff Correspondent)

LONDON, November 17.

About 100 junior hospital doctors have marched from St Thomas’s Hospital, London, to the offices of the General Medical Council, in protest against its decision to strike about I*3oo doctors from its register, beginning on December 15.

The 5300 doctors have refused to pay the G.M.C.’s annual retention fee of £5. They yant an independent public inquiry into the workings of the G.M.C. and are using the fee issue as a lever to introduce an inquiry. Many other junior doctors —“3O per cent of the profession”—who have paid their fee have threatened to request that their names be re®oved from the register too. Doss of registration means that doctors lose their appointments in the National Health Service, and the service could be seriously disrupted.

The junior doctors, the Medical Practitioners’ Union | •nd other members of the i profession allege that the G-M.C. is undemocratic. Only 11 of the 47 members of the G.M.C. are elected, and the rest appointed. Although the body has a duty to protect the public from those who lack the necessary skill or integrity to practise medicine, there are no lay members represented on the council. The British Medical Asso-; ciation has voted against a Public inquiry and has a joint 8.M.A.-G.M.C. working party already investigating the functions of the G.M.C. This week in the House of Commons, Dr Shirley Sumtnerskill. a Labour spokesman for health, asked for an im-

mediate independent inquiry into the G.M.C.’s functions and finance.