The convention in polite public debate is that our political leaders and their support staff are deemed to enjoy high levels of intelligence. If this convention applies to local council workers and their elected superiors, presumably doctors would claim an even stronger entitlement. But are they so justified? Should this convention be respected? Jamie Whyte demonstrates below that problems arise when intelligent public servants stray beyond their specific areas of expertise into related areas where they have some beef or other. They then are too easily tempted to forget to engage their brains and rely instead on their lofty status to lobby for unworkable or pointless rules premised on illogical arguments.

I have decided that I will, with regret, shortly breach the convention if our local leaders doggedly persist in their maintenance of the false argument that Barnet needs more housing and supermarkets at the expense of community facilities. By way of substantiation of my position I invite you to read on.

I now reproduce with the author's permission the article "Demand for Doctors" By Jamie Whyte. This was published in various media in March of this year, and Jamie Whyte discussed it on 'Radio 4' on 22 March.

"I like most of the doctors I know. They are earthy and unsqueamish, about minds as well as bodies. Few, however, know much about economics. This normally does not matter. But occasionally doctors stray off piste, get onto health policy issues and make fools of themselves. Yesterday’s letters page of The Times contained a vivid example.

Twelve doctors wrote a letter lamenting the fact that about 20 per cent of visits to GPs are for “common disturbances to normal good health, such as coughs and colds”. This costs the NHS about £2 billion a year without making any difference to people’s health, since they could just as effectively treat themselves. According to the campaigning doctors, “the NHS has become the victim of a demand-led culture”.

Then, having got almost all the way to the answer, they miss it. Reading their letter is like watching your one year old with a square peg in hand and the square hole directly in view, trying to stuff it into the round hole. The square peg in the doctors’ hand is the word “demand” and the square hole is the fact that the price of visiting a GP is zero.

Perhaps the most familiar law of economics is that demand increases as price decreases – be it demand for apples, foreign holidays, doctors’ visits or anything else of value. The reason people visit GPs so frivolously is that it costs nothing besides the lost time. The obvious solution to the problem is to charge a fee. £10 should be enough to deter people with sniffles. People with something potentially more threatening will be happy to pay this much.

But the doctors miss this trick. Instead they fall back on the hoary old distinction between real needs and mere wants, which they combine with the popular modern absurdity that people should be educated into acting against their own interests. Specifically, they call on politicians to “enable GPs and practice nurses to give people the confidence to use the NHS at the point of need, not demand; educate people to manage minor ailments …”

If the doctors think that this is a good method for rationing GP visits, perhaps they will like this idea for rationing food. Nationalise supermarkets, set the price of all food to zero, then eliminate the problem of wasteful overconsumption by educating people that they should take only the food they need rather than what they want.

The proposal is obviously absurd. No such education could possibly have the desired effect; no one could sensibly specify which food is really needed as opposed to merely wanted; and, even if they could, why should people be allowed to eat only what they need? All the same goes for visiting a GP."

[Jamie Whyte is a former lecturer of Philosophy at Cambridge University and winner of Analysis journal's prestigious prize for the best article by a philosopher under 30.]

The points made so succinctly and elegantly by Jamie Whyte are highly relevant to the majority of the community campaigns with which I have become involved. To recap, our Local Authority approved in 2004 plans to erect 3 blocks of flats and a nursing home on land which was to be unlawfully annexed from public ownership. The stated purpose of this exercise was twofold. Firstly, it was to satisfy the supposed shortage of housing, and secondly the plans would enrich two halves of a joint venture; a) a private company, and b) the bank account of the London Borough of Barnet – note that this is a personal asset of an elected authority as opposed to the public asset that the land was before annexation. The plans were further elevated in importance by association with the wider Brent Cross Regeneration Scheme. That Scheme is predicated on the proposition that the area “needs” more housing. This statement is as devoid of logic as the argument advanced by the 12 doctors in “The Times” and exposed above as bunkum.

Barnet Council are not alone in displaying logical failings of this magnitude at the expense of its precious community sports facilities. London Borough of Islington committed themselves in June 2008 to demolishing their largest community sports centre – The Michael Sobell Centre. 5000 users, including me, are opposed to these plans.

A “Question Time” debate will take place at Emmanuel Church Hornsey Rd, N7 6DU, on April 29th at 7.30 pm on the future of the Centre. The panel will consist of politicians from each of the four main parties (including the Green Party). I am delighted to report that Jamie Whyte has agreed to be Chair. I look forward to the Liberal Democrat’s explanation of their argument that Islington “needs” more housing and less sports facilities. All are welcome. Why not come along?