Last week, The Times’s leading article asked:

Why should doctors, trained at great expense by the state, not be obliged to serve a minimum number of years in the NHS?

Politicians occasionally suggest that doctors who have been trained in the UK—and who have accumulated an average of £71,000 in debt in the process—should have a period of indentured service to the NHS or else pay a still higher contribution to the cost of their training to be freed from this requirement.

I always wonder why the equivalent suggestion isn’t made regarding politicians themselves. Elections are costly, and when MPs resign mid-term, before the end of the period of service for which they were elected, there is a cost to the public purse of running an election to replace them. Why not require MPs to serve their term or repay the by-election costs if they don’t?

The answer is obvious: it’s in no one’s interest to have a de-motivated, disruptive, non-attending Nadine Dorries of an MP, trapped in a job they want to leave because of a perceived ‘fine’ if they quit—a ‘fine’ that they may not be able to afford. And it strikes me that the same applies to doctors.

The image at the top of this post was generated by DALL·E 3.