The president of the British Medical Association has hit out at the coalition government’s spending cuts last week, claiming that its continued insistence that its proposals would create a fairer society were a “grotesque parody of the word fairness.”

Speaking to the World Medical Association’s general assembly in Vancouver on 14 October, Michael Marmot criticised the government’s proposed benefit cuts, which he said would hit poor people the hardest.

“They raise value added tax, which is regressive, and they say we are doing this in the interests of fairness. They cut benefits to the poor, and they say they are …