Oral Answers to Questions

Kevin Barron Excerpts

Tuesday 27th March 2012 Commons Chamber

[Paul Burstow]

There is not a nationally mandated programme of walk-in centres; rather, it will be for local commissioners to make decisions based on the evidence and their evaluation, and ensuring that they fulfil their contractual obligations.

[Mr Kevin Barron (Rother Valley) (Lab)]

Is it not the case that the walk-in centre that opened in Rotherham a few years ago has given communities that are higher on bad health indices access to health care 12 hours a day, seven days a week? Getting rid of it—it was opposed by some local doctors, because it threatened their business—would be a backwards step. Can we expect the new commissioning groups to start commissioning GPs in areas such as mine, which are higher on bad health indices and do not have enough general practitioners?

[Paul Burstow]

I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for his question, because he outlines the need to reduce health inequalities—something that the party of which he is a member failed to do in government. I can assure him that the Bill, which has now gone through all its parliamentary stages, will place a duty on clinical commissioning groups to seek to reduce health inequalities —something that his Government never did.