My family would be intensely surprised to hear me speak to this clause and encourage people to have more than one medical per year. New Speakers are reluctantly dragged to the Chair; I am more than reluctantly dragged to a medical. In the years in which I was a partner at Ernst & Young, an annual medical was required for insurance purposes, but my interpretation of annual was always somewhat loose. I understand that the medical profession have a term for that—white coat syndrome—which, in my case, I attributed to the obvious mental scarring that occurred when I shared student accommodation with too many medics.

During the course of my experience with a regime that required annual medicals, it was impossible to schedule them on a strictly annual basis. It is not a question of a couple of days; it is often impossible, with a large work force and the way in which a medical schedule is taken up and booked far in advance by a doctor, to fit a medical in within even a couple of weeks or a month of the annual date. There were many occasions when a second medical occurred within the same tax year. Also, although I never had to endure it, colleagues of mine had to return during the year, either for further check-ups as a result of their original medical, or for medicals for additional reasons. For the reasons advocated by my hon. Friend, the rules need to be further relaxed, although I assume that I will not have to be subjected to more medicals than I need.