NHS: General Medical Practitioners

Baroness Merron Excerpts

Monday 20th November 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Evans of Rainow (Con)]

I am grateful to my noble friend. I am aware of the Armed Forces scheme—that if you train as a pilot, for example, you cannot leave the Royal Air Force to become an airline pilot. It is not the first time that this question has been asked, and I will feed it back to the department.

[Baroness Merron (Lab)]

My Lords, the Royal College of GPs reports that 40% of its members consider their premises not fit for purpose, something that is not addressed by the workforce plan. As the £10.2 billion backlog in maintenance continues to worsen as capital budgets continue to be raided for day-to-day spending, what strategy do the Government have to ensure that patients can receive care in modern, safe and properly maintained buildings, particularly where an increase in GPs and primary care staff teams is being promised?

[Lord Evans of Rainow (Con)]

The noble Baroness is absolutely right. GP practices’ premises vary throughout the country but, as I said earlier, there is capital funding available for new practices. From my own experience, when GP practices merge it gives an opportunity for them to have a purpose-built building. When I was a Member of Parliament there was a very good example of that where four GP practices throughout the constituency came together to form an outstanding modern GP practice with a new GP practice building.