Aggrieved doctors are planning to stand against the prime minister and the health secretary at the next general election.

A number of health professionals who are part of the National Health Action (NHA) party are planning to fight for high profile seats when voters take to polling stations next year.

The party was formed by doctors in 2012 after they raised concerns about the government’s controversial health reforms.

It has now announced its first batch of candidates. The party’s 12 candidates include GPs, a cancer specialist, a nurse, a mental health expert and other campaigners.

NHA co-leader Clive Peedell has announced that he will stand against prime minister David Cameron for the Witney seat in Oxfordshire.

Meanwhile, Louise Irvine, a campaigner who fought against the proposed downgrading of Lewisham Hospital in south east London, will take on health secretary Jeremy Hunt for his seat in south west Surrey.

As well as taking on Mr Cameron and Mr Hunt, a candidate is also lined up to fight for deputy prime minister Nick Clegg’s Sheffield Hallam seat. Work and pensions secretary Iain Duncan Smith and sports minister Helen Grant will also be challenged by the party.

Dr Peedell said: “It’s going to be one of the tightest elections ever and voters need to realise that the very survival of the NHS is at stake. It won’t endure another five years of continued closures, cost cutting and privatisation.

“If we could get even just one or two MPs elected, the public would know there’d be representatives in Parliament on whom they could always rely to act purely in the best interests of patients and of the NHS, without letting political ideology get in the way.

“For too long the NHS has been used as a political football.”

NHA co-leader Richard Taylor, a former Kidderminster Hospital consultant who was an independent MP for Wyre Forest from 2001 to 2010, will stand for the same Worcestershire seat again.

He said: “I caused a bit of a rumpus when I unexpectedly first won this seat in 2001 and held it in 2005 campaigning to save Kidderminster Hospital.

“Now the Coalition’s disastrous plans for our NHS are plain for all to see, I think I have an excellent chance of completing my hat trick.”

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