(14 years, 2 months ago)
Commons ChamberI am aware of the matter. The right hon. Gentleman will be perfectly well aware of my view: we want to involve general practitioners much more in commissioning out-of-hours services. I will undertake to look at what is proposed by the primary care trusts in north London and see whether it is consistent with the development that we are looking for in the White Paper.
If local GPs fail to support reconfiguration plans en masse—if, say, 97% fail to do so—what would be the Secretary of State’s response?
As I said in response to a previous question, one of the four criteria that I set out on 21 May was that reconfigurations must have the support of local general practitioners as the future commissioners of services. To that extent, a reconfiguration that did not have the support of local general practices would not be able to meet that test.