GP Indemnity Costs: England

Debate between Heidi Allen and David Mowat

Wednesday 15th March 2017 Westminster Hall

[David Mowat]

The two consultations will take 12 weeks. In a sense, my hon. Friend’s question is false. I do not think there will ever be a final solution because we are trying to reconcile two powerful forces: the need for access to justice and equity for people damaged through negligence and the need to be fair to our NHS. There will always be issues that evolve. The discount rate, for example, which we have talked about during the debate, will vary depending on where interest rates move in the months ahead.

We are talking about something that will always have to be kept under review. There will not be a final solution, but the two consultations that I mentioned will make a material difference and I am keen that we should make progress on them as soon as we are able to.

[Heidi Allen (South Cambridgeshire) (Con)]

I appreciate the Minister’s giving way, particularly as I was late arriving for the debate, and so may have missed some key points. Building on the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Cheltenham (Alex Chalk), of course I welcome the Government’s interventions, the consultation, the winter scheme and extra money for GPs to cope with inflationary pressures. The problem is that the costs are already so high.

Addenbrooke’s hospital in my constituency is losing trainee doctors, who are put off by the cost. Older doctors are retiring early. Doctors are thinking twice about going into specialisms because there is perhaps a higher associated risk. Is there nothing else that we can do? Hospitals have Crown indemnity. Could we consider that for GPs? Could we extend it to them, as an alternative idea?

[David Mowat]

Those are all fair points, but in the GP forward view we have said that GPs will not bear the cost of increased indemnity—the Government will; and that is a commitment that we are holding to. The increased costs incurred last year are being paid through the GP contract, following the discussions that we have had with the BMA, and the cost of that to the Government for this year is £33 million. That is a commitment that will go into the future.

However, my hon. Friend the Member for South Cambridgeshire (Heidi Allen) makes a fair point that in a country with a shortage of GPs, where we are trying to recruit a further 5,000 doctors to work in general practice by 2020, we need to make the profession attractive. We are trying to do that, and there are different ways to do it. Indemnity is just part of it. To answer her point, I would say that this year the number of medical students going into GP training is the highest ever achieved. Something over 3,000 are going into the training, and we need them all. I responded to a debate here yesterday about a shortage of GPs in Essex. Frankly there are shortages everywhere; we understand that.

In a sense, I share the frustration of my hon. Friends the Members for South Cambridgeshire and for Cheltenham and the feeling “Why can’t we just fix this?” The answer is that there are legal rights that we cannot just take away; we cannot say that it will just not be possible to sue the NHS in future. That is not the system in the country that we live in. However, we need to do moderate, sensible things to bear down on costs, so that we spend a greater proportion of NHS money on doctors than on lawyers. All of us in the Chamber would agree on that.