Member

My anxiety about the absence of a motivational test is that we encourage, as representatives, people to avail themselves of the health service. We encourage them not to smoke and we encourage them to go and get tested. What we are going to create, in my view, if we are not careful, is a barrier to people seeking medical assistance when they should. It will be translated at street level as, “I’m not going to see Dr Death; he’ll sign me off”. That is the sort of thing you will get in a housing estate somewhere—that is how people will view this. In order to avoid that, we have to have a magnifying glass turned on the motivation—why is this person here at this time? I want to see people going to the health service at an earlier time, especially if they are very unwell, but if they have the fear that they will be signed off, in their terms, for death, it will be a barrier.