Oral Answers to Questions

Gordon Henderson Excerpts

Tuesday 6th June 2023 Commons Chamber

[Neil O’Brien]

The hon. Member has been campaigning doggedly for this for several years, and I am sure that his local ICB will be strongly seized of that and the strong arguments for it. He raised the issue of developer contributions. One thing that we have done in the most recent primary care recovery plan is set further steps to increase investment from developer contributions so that we match new housing with the much-needed infrastructure, such as primary care facilities.

[Gordon Henderson (Sittingbourne and Sheppey) (Con)]

10. What progress his Department has made on increasing the number of available GP appointments.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Care (Neil O'Brien)]

We are taking action to increase the workforce in general practice. We have managed to hit our target of recruiting 26,000 extra clinicians a year earlier. In fact, we have 29,000 extra clinicians in GP surgeries as well as nearly 2,000 more doctors. Of course, we will go further: as well as increasing the training of GPs to a record level—up from about 2,600 to 4,000 a year—we are also taking action to improve technology to take the burden of bureaucracy off GPs through our primary care recovery plan.

[Gordon Henderson]

Although I appreciate the Minister’s response, Sittingbourne and Sheppey still has one of the highest patient to GP ratios in the country. Without more GPs, no initiative to increase appointments will succeed. Our local integrated care board is doing its best to bring more doctors to our area. What help can my hon. Friend give to the ICBs so that they can provide my constituents with the GPs they need?

[Neil O’Brien]

My hon. Friend is quite right that we absolutely need to go further. That is why, through the primary care recovery plan, we are taking some of the pressure off general practice, investing £645 million in the new Pharmacy First service, which will free up about 10 million GP appointments a year. That is why we are investing about £60,000 per practice in new IT and modern online systems. None the less, he is totally right: we need those doctors in general practice. We have about 2,000 more now than we did in 2019, but we will go further. We have already increased GP training and we are looking at building on that further.