NHS Backlog

Andrew Murrison Excerpts

Monday 6th January 2025 Commons Chamber

[Dr Ben Spencer (Runnymede and Weybridge) (Con)]

I thank the hon. Member for North Shropshire (Helen Morgan) for securing this important and timely debate. I must begin by declaring my interests: I am a non-practising NHS consultant psychiatrist and my wife is an NHS doctor.

Christmas and the festive period is always a taxing time for the NHS, especially for those working on call, as indeed it is for all those in the various emergency services and those outside the public sector who are on call. It is important to pay tribute to them for all their hard work over the past couple of weeks.

Much of the correspondence that I have received from constituents over the past few years has concerned the difficulty of obtaining GP appointments. Interestingly, the demand for GP appointments has risen since before the pandemic, following the advent of virtual appointments and different means of contact. Patients are now finding it more difficult to see someone in a general practice, although overall performance in general practices has improved since before the pandemic. It is important that we support our GP practices as much as we can, to ensure that they deliver the high-quality care that our patients expect. Our local practices are fantastic: they are working very hard, in tricky circumstances, to deliver for patients.

[Dr Andrew Murrison (South West Wiltshire) (Con)]

My hon. Friend is, of course, absolutely right. Does he agree that part of our duty is to support our general practices? Our constituents often say, “I cannot see my GP”, but if we probe, we find that it is a question of whether they are prepared to accept a telephone consultation, which is probably just as good for most of them. Radiology was mentioned earlier. The issue for the future, surely, is embracing technology rather than outsourcing. In many cases, AI reading of films and scans is probably as good as, if not better than, a reading by a radiologist in India, Shropshire or anywhere else.

[Dr Spencer]

I entirely agree with my right hon. Friend about the use of AI to improve productivity in the NHS, and with what he has said about general practices.

I generally take a neutral, honest-broker approach when people raise concerns about general practices. Of course it is important for us to ensure that our practices are performing well, to support them, and to respond to our constituents’ concerns more broadly. However, given that the bulk of care is coming through general practice—and I was interested to hear, in recent days, about the renewed focus on patient choice, particularly in respect of secondary and tertiary care—I think that one of the challenges posed by our current general practice system relates to the absence of patient choice. Effectively, general practices, which, as the Minister will know, are private organisations, have a monopoly in terms of the patients who are in their catchment area. It is very difficult for patients to move to different practices when the ones that they are currently using are not meeting their needs: when seeking an appointment with a GP, they are stuck with their own practice, or else they must go through various mechanisms to obtain care elsewhere.