Disability rights campaigners, Junior Doctors, GPs and trade unionists protested outside City Road Medical Centre to express their alarm at plans being piloted in Islington without risk assessment by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) to install so-called "Job Coaches" in doctors' surgeries to coerce patients with long-term physical and mental illnesses into finding work. The protesters fear that this dangerously blurs the line between the National Health Service and the DWP, and that vulnerable patients - especially those with mental health issues who may already have suffered punitive sanctions at the hands of the DWP - will lose all trust in their doctors who will become de facto agents of the DWP and will stop visiting them, even if it endangers their own health.

Junior doctors protest over plans to embed DWP job advisors in GP surgeries

London, UK. 04 March, 2016. Disability rights campaigners, Junior Doctors, GPs and trade unionists protested outside City Road Medical Centre to express their alarm at plans being piloted in Islington without risk assessment by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) to install so-called “Job Coaches” in doctors’ surgeries to coerce patients with long-term physical and mental illnesses into finding work.

The protesters fear that this dangerously blurs the line between the National Health Service and the DWP, and that vulnerable patients – especially those with mental health issues who may already have suffered punitive sanctions at the hands of the DWP – will lose all trust in their doctors who will become de facto agents of the DWP and will stop visiting them, even if it endangers their own health.

Photographer: Pete Riches\ Images Live