GP Contract

Helena Dollimore Excerpts

Monday 16th March 2026 Commons Chamber

[Stephen Kinnock]

The guidance on neighbourhood health will be published very soon indeed; it is almost complete, and is coming soon. We recognise that general practice will be right at the heart of neighbourhood health, so we have to ensure a single neighbourhood provider contract and a multi-neighbourhood provider contract that are aligned with the best value that we can deliver, both for the taxpayer and in terms of patient outcomes. We will also be consulting on the single neighbourhood provider and multi-neighbourhood provider, with the consultation process starting some time after the overarching neighbourhood guidance, which is coming out very soon.

[Helena Dollimore (Hastings and Rye) (Lab/Co-op)]

It has been really hard to get a GP appointment in Hastings and Rye, so I welcome the bold action that this Government are taking to tackle that 8 am scramble to get a GP appointment: more funding for GPs; changing the funding formula to better support coastal towns, like ours; and requiring GPs, as part of this new contract, to have online booking and same-day appointments for urgent cases. However, I want to ensure that all the people I represent are benefiting from the reforms this Government are introducing, so this spring I will be launching a GP survey for all my constituents to fill out. What work is the Minister doing to ensure that we feel the benefits of these reforms everywhere in the country, and will he, alongside NHS officials at the integrated care board, meet me later this year to discuss the findings of my GP survey?

[Stephen Kinnock]

My hon. Friend and I have had some discussions about GP practices in her constituency, and I know she is doing excellent work to ensure that performance is always being driven in the right direction. She asks what we are doing right across the country; the Carr-Hill formula will be a nationwide initiative, and the contract itself is also nationwide. It is important that the Government do not try to micromanage and that ICBs and trusts work together. We are there to set the framework and ensure that everybody is clear about the outcomes; it is then up to the people at the coalface to deliver those outcomes. We do need to know where that is not working, so perhaps we could look at my hon. Friend’s survey once she has it; it would be a good way of checking in and ensuring that there is a golden thread between the outcomes that we want to see and the delivery on the ground.