Two years of no sunshine

On Thursday 22nd March 2018 I will be standing outside the Scottish Parliament with this banner.

This will be a peaceful, one-man protest, two years to the day that my petition for a Sunshine Act was closed. My petition closed on a most positive finding: that the Scottish public, in an official consultation (by the Scottish Health Council) concluded that declarations of competing interests should be mandatory and recorded centrally in an open register.

I was hopeful that the campaign on Realistic Medicine might have encouraged some action before now as the issue of competing interests has been part of a number of health inquiries

• Mesh scandal,
• Prescribed drug dependence and withdrawal
• Dementia screening and research
• Antipsychotic prescribing

However it is now two years on and the Scottish Government has provided no meaningful update. This is the reason for my protest.