GP Recruitment and Retention
Debate between Bridget Phillipson and John Howell(6 years, 7 months ago)
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Bridget Phillipson
I am sure the experience of my hon. Friend’s constituent is happening up and down the country. We want to ensure that people can access quality healthcare close to home. It is neither cost-effective nor in the best interest of patients to have to travel further to hospital for things that could be dealt with more readily within a GP’s practice.
More and more local people are telling me that they have to attend accident and emergency to get the treatment they need, because they cannot get an appointment with their GP or their local practice is closed when they need it. We saw record numbers at Sunderland Royal Hospital A&E this winter, when the entire NHS was stretched to breaking point. It is extremely worrying in that context that so many people are turning to emergency services simply to access the care that family doctors might ordinarily provide.
John Howell (Henley) (Con)
The hon. Lady has made a brilliant start to her speech. I did a similar survey to the one she describes in my own constituency, and I found that access to GPs was almost instantaneous provided that people did not specify the GP they wanted to see. My own practice consists of a number of GPs. I think the results are patchy around the country. Is this not a time to look at the old partnership structure of GPs, to avoid the situation where a young doctor has to find £100,000 or £200,000 in order to go into practice?
Bridget Phillipson
The hon. Gentleman raises a fair point about patchiness, and I hope the Minister will be able to respond to it in his summing-up. There are big regional variations, and differences even within cities and towns, and we need to try to even out access to general practice. He raises an important point about routes into the profession and the barriers that they sometimes place in the way of those seeking to work in general practice, and I hope the Minister will say a bit more about what the Department will seek to do to take away some of those barriers.
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Bridget Phillipson and John Howell
Bridget Phillipson (Houghton and Sunderland South) (Lab)
1. What steps his Department is taking to encourage devolution of powers to cities, towns and county regions.
John Howell (Henley) (Con)
9. What steps the Government are taking to devolve powers to local communities.
The Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government (Greg Clark)
We shall have a moment of silence at the end of Question Time, but I think that, as we gather together in the House at this point, we will all want to share our condemnation of the atrocities in Tunisia, Kuwait and France last week. All our thoughts and prayers are with the victims and their families.
The Government are committed to devolving greater powers away from Whitehall to drive economic growth. We have already taken steps to enable that to happen by introducing the Cities and Local Government Devolution Bill. I welcome devolution proposals from all areas, including proposals relating to how powers might be devolved to cities, towns, counties and neighbourhoods throughout the country.