It is time the government stopped playing politics with our health.

If we are ill, we go to the doctor and it is the doctor who should say what happens. After all, who knows our health better than our doctors?

They have studied medicine for years, have practised for more years, and have probably been further trained on a regular basis.

You would expect that doctors know their subject, certainly far more than our jumped-up politicians and bureaucrats who keep making changes to the system and creating more and more paperwork for doctors and patients to complete.

One could suspect that these changes are only made to keep the bureaucrats in a job – a job that is nothing but pen-pushing, making up new rules, riding on the assumption that because they are new they must be better. What a load of nonsense!

The latest example is the introduction of blue badges for people suffering from hidden disabilities.

This is already a damp squib, for people with these hidden disabilities have always been possible recipients of these blue badges, but have not taken them up, or have not been offered them by narrow-minded, hair-splitting bureaucrats.

If a doctor sees a patient, observes that he or she has a disability – a real one, visible or hidden, the doctor ought to make the decision about what help this patient needs.

Any tick boxes should be the doctor saying whether the patient needs 24-hour care, a blue badge and whatever else is needed.

Tick boxes have no place in so-called assessments by clerks who have never met the person before, who are not fully medically trained and who are making wild assumptions about the person before them according to how they appear to be on the day.

If our doctors had more say and were treated with the respect they deserve, we would certainly have fewer cheats trying to get disability allowance when they don’t need it.

We have all heard of the so-called disabled people claiming they cannot walk and then being caught moving freely once they are in the house.

With clerks judging hidden disabilities the way is rife for cheats to succeed. A doctor is much more experienced in noticing the signs when someone is really mentally ill, for example.

A doctor who knows the patient would be able to judge more certainly if the patient needs a blue badge.

One local was told by a doctor that her partner should have continuing care. A bureaucrat immediately exclaimed that the doctor had no right to say this. This attitude has to change. If it did, it would save a lot of money too or has no one thought of this yet?