Recovering Access to Primary Care

Debate between Baroness Young of Old Scone and Lord Markham

Tuesday 9th May 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Markham (Con)]

The noble Lord is quite correct to point out that, where you have a number of new houses in a local community, you need to make sure that there are primary care services to serve them as well. Funnily enough, just today I was having a conversation with Housing Minister Maclean on this very subject, about changing the way that we look at Section 106 payments—or CIL payments, as they are called these days—to make sure that the provision of the primary care estate is one of the key elements that can be funded through that. I know that DLUHC colleagues are very much on board with that, because absolutely fundamental to the point that the noble Lord makes is that we need to make sure that, alongside the new housing, which we all agree is very important, there are sufficient primary care services as well.

[Baroness Young of Old Scone (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for the Statement but regret that it concentrates on more GP and other ancillary services to meet rising demand rather than focusing on the causes of that rising demand. A major source of pressure on GPs is due to the complications of diabetes, yet inadequate action is being taken on obesity, often in the face of pressures from the food lobby. Similarly, the Minister talked about the rising number of over-70s—I should declare an interest—yet much of that pressure is due to elderly people failing to get adequate social care and falling back on general practice because they have nowhere else to go. Yet, over the last 13 years, the Conservative Government have absolutely run away from any sort of reform agenda for social care. Will the Minister comment on whether new phones are going to plug even the short-term pressure, and will he tell us what sustained long-term solutions to managing down the demand for GP and other ancillary services his Government are thinking of?

[Lord Markham (Con)]

First, I completely agree with the noble Baroness’s point that prevention is better than cure—I think we would all subscribe to that—and that is what the Government’s manifesto pledge of five years’ more healthy life is all about. On how the app comes into that, it all comes down to people taking more control of their own health, such as by being able to receive reminders that it is time for their cervical smear or heart MoT, so that they can start to take ownership of their own health. Towards that, the community pharmacists have already provided 1 million blood pressure checks, through which 300,000 people were found to have high blood pressure. That is a prime example of where this expanded network really can get on to the prevention agenda, which we all agree is absolutely key to helping solve the health situation going forward.