Stoke Newington GP, Dr Michael Fitzpatrick, was on 5 Live this morning responding to the Government’s plan to survey 5 million patients. [BBC]

Now I know it’s hard to get guests at 8am on a Sunday morning, especially about something quite so exciting. But booking someone like Fitzpatrick, and then introducing him as just another GP, is disingenuous. Dr Fitzpatrick is an author and columnist with a distinct health agenda, and he used his radio slot to push his “worried well” hypothesis. Fitzpatrick recently popped up in a similar generic GP capacity on Today. When he pops up, interviewers could at least mention his back-story and his opinions. It’s not Fitzpatrick’s fault that he’s introduced so poorly, but it is a little sloppy to pass him off as a kind of medical ‘everyman.’

Maybe the BBC should introduce an open access database to let people check up on guest booking – like the one they beta tested earlier this year?

Fitzpatrick is another fellow traveller from the Institute of Ideas.