Oral Answers to Questions

Edward Leigh Excerpts

Tuesday 1st November 2022 Commons Chamber

[Steve Barclay]

The hon. Gentleman skirts over the fact that it is this Government who have opened five new medical schools, who have significantly boosted medical undergraduate training, who are investing more in our NHS as per the long-term plan, who have invested a further £36 billion as part of our covid response, and who are investing in technology and the skills of the workforce as a whole. We are boosting the number of medical trainees and—I touched on this question earlier—we are also boosting the number of doctors in training to be GPs.

[Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)]

T2. At a face-to-face surgery this weekend, a constituent mentioned the difficulties that a relative of hers, who has subsequently died, had had in getting a face-to-face GP appointment at a surgery run by an American company called Centene, which now covers 600,000 patients. Will the Government insist that we are fully committed to the traditional approach of a committed and caring family doctor seeing patients face to face, and that we will not allow GP surgeries to be fully commercialised?

[Steve Barclay]

My right hon. Friend raises an important point about face-to-face care, which matters to many constituents, but I gently remind him that in the Lincolnshire integrated care system, 71.9% of appointments were face to face in September 2022. It is not the case that every patient wants a face-to-face appointment; there can be instances in which an online service is better. For patients facing domestic violence, for example, it can often provide a much more convenient service.