Access to Primary Healthcare

Laura Kyrke-Smith Excerpts

Wednesday 16th October 2024 Commons Chamber

[Laura Kyrke-Smith (Aylesbury) (Lab)]

I hear from many constituents in Aylesbury who are struggling to see their GP. For some, this is a frustration—a repeated one. For others, it is a tragedy. I sat with a constituent who shared a heartbreaking story about a missed cancer diagnosis because it was impossible to get an appointment.

The reasons for the challenges are clear, as the Minister set out. In Aylesbury, two additional factors are creating particular pressures. First, many new housing developments have been built in the last 14 years without the necessary services to accompany them—for example, the promised GP surgery in Kingsbrook that was never built, adding pressure to other surgeries, such as Poplar Grove. Secondly, there are high levels of deprivations in parts of Aylesbury. The well documented link between poverty and ill health leads to patients having increased and complex physical and mental health needs that GP surgeries are not funded or equipped to meet.

Let us be clear about the cause of these challenges, which are not the fault of patients, who like all of us are just trying to stay in good health, or of GPs, who often work incredibly long hours in a system that lets them down and wears them down. The problem is the broken system that this Labour Government have inherited after 14 years of Conservative government.

Let me turn to the solutions. The early steps that we have taken are a clear signal of our intent: the ending of the junior doctor strikes, the red tape challenge that the Secretary of State launched with NHS England, and the measures that we took within weeks of being elected, including finding £82 million of additional funding to enable the immediate recruitment of 1,000 more GPs. I know from the GPs I am in touch with that that has made a real difference.

There is still much work to do. I will highlight three areas of necessary focus. First, we must expand the range of care available in the community. GP surgeries waste time referring patients to hospital-led community services when they know that they could treat those patients directly but do not have the funding or permission to do so. Meanwhile, patients tell me that they have had to go to A&E for minor issues because there is no support closer to home. Our ambition for an expanded range of support and services through neighbourhood health centres is absolutely right, and we are getting straight to work on that.

Secondly, on technology, I hear time and again of GPs spending hours trying to make referrals to and from the hospital, battling IT systems that are not intuitive and do not speak to each other. Meanwhile, patients tell me that they cannot fathom why there is not a better system for booking appointments. There are great pilot schemes that could be rolled out more widely. At the GP surgery in Edlesborough in my constituency, for example, a carefully designed AI chatbot answers patients’ questions where it can, and helps GPs to prioritise which patients to see.

Thirdly, we need a firm emphasis on prevention in public health by driving up public awareness of health risks. On a recent visit to the main mosque in Aylesbury, for example, I saw a stand with information about diabetes. That is exactly the right way to get the right information in front of people. Once public health risks are identified, we must empower patients to manage their own health as best they can. As Vernon Sharples, a mental health nurse in my constituency, said to me:

“There is too much prescribing, too much emphasis on being ill, and not enough emphasis on being and staying well.”

To me, taking public health, including mental health, seriously, and building a society that understands and promotes wellbeing to keep people healthy before they need to seek treatment with a GP, is what a good preventive approach looks like.

Achieving that vision will take a long time, and change cannot come soon enough for people in my constituency who so desperately need to see their GP today or tomorrow, but we have started as we mean to go on, and we will not stop until we have achieved the change that we so desperately need.

[Several hon. Members rose—]