Sir – Your report (City GP says he will defy NHS on handing over patient information, February 13) on Dr Gordon Gancz’s stand against the Government’s care.data behemoth reminds us, as a family, why Dr Gancz has been and continues to be, the best possible GP we could hope to have.

For decades he has patiently, kindly and with the deepest medical wisdom, attended to our needs, always protected by an absolute commitment to patient confidentiality. That Dr Gancz has set up blocking codes for opt-outs from care.data, plus a clear notice on his website explaining why, is very much of a piece with his unwavering determination to put the care of his patients at the forefront of all he does.

Gordon Gancz has devoted more than four decades to doctoring in Oxford, to town and gown alike, the latter as doctor to five colleges, including St Catherine’s, to which he was elected a fellow in Michaelmas 2009.

In addition to his day-to-day ministrations as a GP, he also set up the pioneering University Counselling Service, a model of its kind; and he’s a senior lecturer in clinical medicine.

Now the dictatorial bureaucrats of NHS England’s Thames Valley Area have issued Dr Gancz with ‘a notice of remediation’, which demands he take down the opt-outs and the accompanying message on the (independent) surgery website. Should he not comply, the bureaucrats could then move to breach of contract proceedings and the possibility that Dr Gancz and his colleagues at the 9 King Edward Street surgery will be closed down and the medical records of those who don’t opt out will become “wild-west” commodities, accessible to insurance companies, the police, “agencies of the state” and so on, a medical “gold-rush” which must be resisted. We should all opt out. In our case, Dr Gordon Gancz has done this for us.

Bruce Ross-Smith, Sally Mercer, Huw, Tom, Elinor, and Gabriel Pryce, Headington