NHS: General Practitioners

Baroness Wall of New Barnet Excerpts

Wednesday 26th February 2014 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Wall of New Barnet (Lab)]

I follow on from the question of my noble friend Lord Hunt and the Minister’s acknowledgement that the effectiveness of primary care needs to be improved. I agree with what the Minister said about the improvement in some GP services, but still many individuals come to A&E at all times, whether the surgery is open or otherwise, which makes things very difficult. For instance, Barnet Hospital received 117 ambulances yesterday, which made it extremely difficult to deal with people who had walked in, who probably could have had their treatment somewhere else.

[Earl Howe]

The noble Baroness is quite right. The NHS is seeing an extra 1 million patients in A&E compared to three years ago. Despite the additional workload, it is generally coping very well although we know that departments are under strain. This is not just about A&E, as the noble Baroness will be aware, but about how the NHS works as a whole: how it works with other areas, such as social care, and how it deals with an ageing population and more people with long-term conditions. Dealing with all that means looking at the underlying causes, and that work is going on at the moment in NHS England.