I have been a hospital doctor at the Royal London Hospital, specialising in infectious diseases but essentially working with people living with HIV, until I retired last year. I became more politically active when campaigning against the health and social care bill and was one of the founders of the National Health Action Party in response to its becoming law in 2012. We hoped to use the electoral system to highlight NHS issues that, at that time, were very poorly presented to the general public. Unfortunately in this we largely failed, partly because the protest vote was sucked up by UKIP, and our electoral campaigns got very little publicity. After the 2015 election I felt we had lost our purpose and should join Labour. As a registered officer of the party I could not leave it until I was replaced and did not finally extricate myself until last year when I did join the Labour Party. I hope to continue campaigning against wasteful outsourcing, the internal market, underfunding, deteriorating primary care and insane hospital and A/E closures.