By News Reporters
Councillor Adam Harrison amused the full Camden Council meeting last Monday when he stood up to announce that recently he had reason to be reminded of the Schleswig-Holstein Question.
“I was working on a ward-based issue and I was reminded of the Schleswig-Holstein Question, which I’m sure will be familiar to many of you, ” said the Bloomsbury ward councillor.
“If memory serves me correctly, only three people understood the question: the first went mad, the other died, and I don’t know what happened to the third. It certainly wasn’t me…” he told the full council to howls of laughter.
“But it does rather remind me of the Health and Social Care Bill as it currently stands and which no-one seems to quite understand why we are going through it in the first place. But I bring that up because it does relate to a ward based issue in Fitzrovia as we try to understand what impact this Bill will have.
“We currently have a GP centre called the Fitzrovia Medical Centre based just inside Camden on Fitzroy Square which after the Middlesex Hospital site is developed may move to new premises,” said councillor Harrison.
Mr Harrison was concerned that if the medical centre did move across the border into Westminster to the Middlesex site, there could be implications for Camden residents trying to access a GP. “I haven’t been able to find out what will happen both in terms of access to the medical centre and in terms of funding per head,” he told the council.
Currently a nearby medical centre in New Cavendish Street in the Westminster part of Fitzrovia does not allow Camden residents to sign up.
Councillor Harrison said he wanted to bring it to the attention of full Council and in particular members of Camden’s Health Committee.
Adam Harrison perhaps aspires to a political career as lengthy as that of Lord Palmerston who is reported to have said: “Only three people…have ever really understood the Schleswig-Holstein business—the Prince Consort, who is dead—a German professor, who has gone mad—and I, who have forgotten all about it.”
Audio of cllr Adam Harrison speaking: