Health Minister Ben Bradshaw’s ‘gentlemen’s agreements‘ between GPs remind me of the Bishop of Rochester’s Islamic ‘no go areas’. That is, if they exist, let’s see the evidence. Come on, if you’re so sure.

These agreements might exist it’s just that assertions that they do are difficult to swallow coming from a representative of a government as morally bankrupt as this one. If a news bulletin said ‘the government announced today that the sun rose this morning’, you’d move to the window to double check for yourself.

So let’s have transcripts of secret meeting between GPs. Video footage. A penitent whistleblower spilling his guts on the evening news. Until then, the belief holds hard that this is the latest in a smear campaign against GPs by the government in order to get doctors to push government policy.

A dossier! That’s it. Let’s have a dossier of all your evidence, Mr Bradshaw. On issues of trust, New Labour ministers taking on family doctors is going to be an interesting battle to watch.