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Dr Teck Khong: Chinese addition for British politics

Dr Teck Khong, former Parliamentary Candidate for Bradford North and a GP,  ponders on a quiet corner of diversity politics. 

“Yes, can I help you? ….You speak very good English…Into the main hall and up the stairs to the left”. That was the other half of the dialogue between my daughter and the police at the security check-point at Westminster recently. She was joining me at the belated New Year reception of the Chinese in Britain All Party Parliamentary Group. Unfortunately, she missed the event.

My daughter, who looks impeccably Chinese, has an English mother and was educated privately. She graduated last year with First Class Honours in Law at the LSE. Of course, we don't go around shouting out such things, and neither are we expected to post our curriculum vitae on laptop bags, brief cases or even emblazon the back of our tee-shirts with our family pedigree. And what's there to be ashamed of, if I was a kitchen hand at a Chinese takeaway? Such social situations are commonplace and are tedious, sometimes even exasperating. 

As is often the case with these inter-racial encounters, I suspect the flow of stimuli and responses can cascade along pathways of misconception so what we then witness is an aggregate of flawed perceptions. The real reasons are legion, but as a whole, they represent some of the major hurdles for both the Chinese and the indigenous white population, and which is probably different from their respective interactions with other ethnic groups. 

Dr Teck Khong: We desperately need a doctor-patient leader, a latter-day Beveridge

Dr Teck Khong, Chairman of the Leicestershire Health Consortium and Director of Chirurgiae LLP, believes that the medical profession must defend the ideals of the NHS by being unified in true advocacy of patient welfare.

Working in different parts of the NHS and in various regions of the country over thirty years offers an immensely useful breadth of experience of our evolving health system. The changes have been mixed, but with the advantage of "insider" access to perspectives denied to the public, the overall trend is worrying indeed.

Commercial ethos and retail mentality have become pre-eminent in our health system today, thanks to mismanagement and defective policies. Political flirtations with consumerism over the past decade have resulted in a flurry of public-private betrothals which are now progressing to marriage contracts at an alarming rate and which are leading inexorably to the privatisation of large swathes of the NHS, despite the recent change of premiership.

Various large companies that are linked to the privatisation of the NHS have captivated the attention of the government with the sorts of market efficiencies and profitability only powerful commercial organisations seem able to achieve. By welcoming these big corporations, the government hoped to address the intractable problems of cost containment and inefficiencies. However, that is the basis of the most seriously flawed socio-political dogma of recent times.

Dr Teck Khong: A fundamental flaw in our benefit claims system

Dr Teck Khong, Candidate for Bradford North in the 2005 General Election, a GP and forensic physician for Northamptonshire Police, describes the flaws in incapacity benefit.

It has been reported recently that there are 1.65 million people who are unemployed, with a further 7.9 million defined as "inactive". Of the 2.67 million people on incapacity benefit, over half of them have been off work for more than five years. 

Earlier this year, the figure for incapacity benefit claimants who had been off work for five years or more was 1.23 million compared with just under 1 million in 2001, while total incapacity claimants rose only slightly to 2.43 million from 2.42 million. Despite Government assurances that the problem of widespread incapacity claims is being tackled by getting the long-term sick back to work, the Department for Work and Pensions figures show that the proportion of long-term incapacity benefit claimants has been rising steadily in recent years. In financial terms, Incapacity Benefit claims alone total more than £7 billion a year.

Dr Teck Khong: Building the British nationhood with honesty and openness.

Dr Teck Khong is a parliamentary candidate, a Leicester GP and forensic physician for Northamptonshire Police, and the founding chairman of the Leicestershire Health Consortium.

Malaysia is widely known for its verdant beauty and multi-racial harmony. But back in 1969, race and religious riots threatened to destroy that country. Its leaders had no choice but to acknowledge the underlying causes. They responded with a reaffirmation of secular government and Malaysia was transformed into an economic powerhouse.

The Malaysian experience offers some important lessons to us in our efforts to deal with social unease brought about by a rising tide of immigration, particularly illegal immigration and religious extremism. Laws on immigration are inadequate, and the processes for dealing with illegal immigration are hampered by a lack of both political commitment and consistent implementation. Tough decisions and actions are seriously overdue.

At the same time the monitor of social change – freedom of speech, a highly prized and democratic heritage – has fallen victim to political correctness. That is why concerns over immigration are expressed in two different ways – within the safe confines of private discussion and in public with words chosen for political safety. Such duality serves no purpose and achieves nothing apart from fomenting and escalating unrest.

Dr Teck Khong: Proposals for consumer-responsive healthcare

Dr Teck Khong, is a parliamentary candidate, Leicester GP and forensic physician for Northamptonshire Police, and the founding chairman of the Leicestershire Health Consortium.

Although funding and medical resourcing such as staffing and hospitals dominate the debate on the NHS, the balance between public health requirements and individual medical needs is the real issue. 

In remodelling the NHS, the government follows a global trend of policy shifting (here and here) from a model of all possible care for everyone, to one which delivers high-quality essential care to all based on cost-effectiveness. To facilitate this, elements of market-oriented economy are adopted to varying degrees in the hope that they will be matched by individual exercise of choice and responsibility. Real market benefits are unfortunately limited as rationing continues based on what services the government can finance and deliver. Furthermore, any rationing that excludes whole groups of the population is unacceptable, even though it is impossible to provide every conceivable service for everyone. 

As the NHS begins to specify its exclusions, the ethical argument will centre on the premise that taxes are paid into a health system that does not deliver all the expected services. Included will be such matters as impairment of individual right to life, and the use of potentially beneficial but expensive treatments that are unavailable from tax-funded provisions for otherwise debilitating or life-threatening illnesses.