Political letter from my gp telling who to vote for

We have 10 doctors who are MPs.

50 doctors stood as candidates in tbe last election.

I cannot believe the idiocy of people frothing at this.

Do you really think that only private sector workers can campaign?

This would be deeply illiberal.

It is not 'state-sponsored propaganda' if a doctor or teacher puts their name to a quote in a political leaflet.

People paid from the public purse telling patients who to vote for. In other words, state sponsored propaganda.

Totally unacceptable.

Anyone who says that our public institutions have not been captured isn’t looking hard enough.

I think we need to introduce the Life In The UK Test for all UK citizens before they're allowed to vote. The level of confidence people have when stating complete bollocks as correct is amazing and horrifying to see at the same time.

Maybe we'd need to lower the pass rate for those born in the UK though. As a reasonable adjustment for their condition.

Wtf, it's either ok for all political parties or none.

I'm going with likely the information came from legit sources. But I wouldn't be happy getting this from my GP.
Who I might add I haven't seen in years. If my GP had time to get involved in politics, good for him, maybe get his arse to the practice and see more people eh.

I heard at the start of this election campaign that campaigners were expecting the public to be significantly more engaged than usual, with many people taking an active interest for the first time, and boy does it show.

There is an open electoral register and a closed one, not accessible to all. You can ask for you name to be removed from the open electoral register, as I have done.

Does your surgery use something like SystmOne for your records? If you can log on to that, you can see exactly who in the practice accessed your records, and when. And depending on what the practice records, you might also be able to go into your recent record, and it specifies what was done at various times - mine sometimes shows that the looked up my phone number, or that they sent a text to me, and what the text said. So if you can remember when you last visited, phoned, requested prescriptions etc ,you can possibly see if there is anything beyond that, although you can't draw any firm conclusions from any of it. But if you haven't had any interactions whatsoever for years with the practice, but there is recent access, you could try to work out why.

Why? Roseena Alinn-Khan and Liam Fox are both MPs who have been doctors, and I bet they're not the only ones. I believe Alinn-Khan still practices, during the parliamentary recesses.

People LOVE to "escalate", "raise a formal complaint", "write to the CEO / MP" - all puffed up thinking they are right - based on zero information.

OP, when you find out where the letter was sent from, please do come back and tell us.

I've had personalised letters from the candidates. Name and address from electoral roll.
No GP would use his or her patient list.

Fairly common tactic to add a well known locally recognised person’s support to a letter.

I help with campaigns and see this a lot. We don’t do it (not in our local area anyway), but it is a common occurrence.

I suppose whether any rule was broken will depend on the letter and its context and where the data came from. I would heavily guess that this has come from the electoral database and sent out from Dr. Xxx who is also a supporter. If it is worded like “I’m A local GP from the constituency” that’s one thing.
However, it is worded “I am YOUR GP” then I may have questions as to where the data came from.

That said though, PPCs and their supporters tend to use language like “Your” to sound local and personable so even this doesn’t prove the origin of the data.

Someone up thread had the idea of asking other locals who had a different GP if they got the same mail shot - this is probably the best idea.

Elections in the UK are heavily policed and monitored. I’d be very surprised if any of the main parties risked breaking the rules. Having said that, I have had a political speech from my GP so I know they can be quite opinionated and political

I blame declining academic standards at the University of Life.

It is an overreach but it’s probably been done out of desperation. On the frontline of healthcare they constantly see how bad things are. I live in an area with a very high percentage of elderly people. They’ve been voting in the same useless Tory MP for years ( and yes some conservatives are good local MPs, I know, this one is not). If I was a local GP I would also be tempted to ask them to reflect on the consequences of their political choices. As others have said ultimately no one’s going to know how you vote.

You did not consent to receive political post from your GP. It's a GDPR breach at best. Complain! Not directly to the surgery of course.

This thread is hilarious! The number of posters insistent it's an ICO matter on absolutely zero evidence or convinced that anyone working in the field of medicine has to be politically neutral. Or newspapers! 🤣

You sound delightful, you must be a humble member of society. 🙄

People don't like to be lied to. Someone pretending that they are from a party and not is misleading.

It's insane.

Same, this was in light blue and said they are a reform candidate- made it look like he was stepping aside. I'm waiting for conservative to knock on my door to give them a piece of my mind. (As a former voter, they have definitely put me off)

This thread is very odd.

Surely, there cannot be so many posters unaware of the existence and purpose of the electoral register.

Are these bots?

He could have got it but then done segmentation on it.

Which is still fine.

The issue is if they got the electoral roll and then linked it to the names on his practise - i.e. Processed the data at the practise to see which people were on the electoral roll.

Which is not what the data at the GP practise was collected for.

I doubt he's got your info from the surgery records. It will be from the electoral register, on behalf of/paid for by whatever party.

In which case, fine. He's not speaking as "your" doctor, but giving his opinion as "a" doctor - a respected, expert member of the community giving his opinion, just like authors, celebs, politicians, business people and indeed other doctors do. It's a free country.