He’s been at the coal face of the NHS healthcare as a GP for 30 years, but now Paul Hobday has retired early to tackle what he sees as a threat to its very foundation.
The 57-year-old, of Loose Road, Maidstone, left the Sutton Valence doctors’ surgery in South Lane, last month after three decades.
Although he will be officially leaving the employment of the NHS, he plans instead to devote time to protecting it the movement from government changes which, he said, would destroy family medicine.
“It has been a great privilege to be a GP for 30 years - it is the best job in medicine in my opinion. It was quite difficult leaving after four generations of families I had been looking after. I was treating the babies of the babies that I delivered.”
But he said he felt it was time to leave the profession due to growing misgivings about changes in public healthcare, with Primary Care Trusts (PCTs) replaced by GP Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs) in April this year.
He now intends to campaign for the basic principles which the service was founded on in 1948: healthcare should be free; universal, and comprehensive.
And he said he is considering standing for the National Health Action Party at the next election, if he receives enough support locally, saying: “I am very passionate about this and everybody that doesn’t want money interfering with their clinical decisions should be passionate as well.”

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