THE role of any Government in a free and democratic society is to get on running the country while the rest of us go about our lives.

I know I’m stating the obvious but I believe there is a large section of the population who believe that once we have voted in a Government it is that Government’s job to tell us what to do, or what to put with.

This is not so – it is, in fact, the reverse.

Once we have sat through the party political broadcasts, listened to the debates, weighed up the policies and decided who has the nicest ties, we put a tick in the box on election day and leave the winners to get on with it.

Occasionally, the ruling party, or parties, may make a decision we don’t like and it’s quite within our right to protest and you hope that your MP or, if you’re lucky, a minister or even the PM might listen to what you have to say and act upon it. Whether that happens or not is another matter.

There comes a point, however when the voices become too many and too loud to ignore; when, if we do live in a true democracy, the Government must listen to what it is being said by the people who voted it into power, and act.

Tony Blair’s brazen two fingers to the million who marched past his window in protest at his Government’s support of the illegal Iraq war is a perfect example of a politician losing sight of his remit.

We tell you when we don’t like what you are doing, and if there are a majority of us saying it, then you listen or there will be trouble.

The poll tax riots of 1990 were another example of the population pushed to its limit by an unmoving Government. And let’s not kid ourselves that this was a peaceful protest hijacked by anarchists and the lefties – this was ordinary peoples’ anger at a Government ignoring the will of the population, though a welcome nail in the coffin of Margaret Thatcher’s tenancy at Number 10.

The sheer brass neck of the woman was demonstrated as, leaving Downing Street for the last time, she was still defending a policy which by that time had only two per cent support among the people.

If David Cameron has any sense of history or self-preservation, he must surely realise that he now too faces his own “poll-tax moment” over the NHS.

The difference here, and what unfortunately may save Cameron’s skin, is that a lot of people in the UK don’t understand the complicated issue of NHS funding or the Health and Social Care Bill which is currently worming its way uncomfortably through parliament like a salted and shrivelled slug.

So it’s been up to the front-line health professionals and rogue MPs to voice their concerns over the radical overhaul to the NHS.

A number of Liberal Democrat MPs are now beginning to shift uneasily on their green leather benches over the Bill, and this comes after a number of hugely influential health bodies publically opposed the reforms.

The British Medical Association and the Royal College of Nursing are just two of the heavyweights who have called for a halt.

It’s time for Cameron to listen and have a major rethink about the reforms.

What would be wrong, however, is for health secretary Andrew Lansley to be used as a sacrificial goat and lose his job in an act of appeasement while the Bill is withdrawn, renamed and given a new coat of paint only to begin the whole thing again.

This is, after all, the Government’s bill and not exclusively Mr Lansley’s.

The time has come to halt the Bill and to have a serious debate involving the Government and those who will be affected most by the reforms – the public and those on the frontline of the NHS every day, the doctors and nurses.