GP Access

Lord Stirrup Excerpts

Tuesday 7th June 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Kamall (Con)]

The noble Baroness makes an important point. Because of the focus on Covid and making sure we were keeping everyone safe, especially before we had a vaccine, precautions clearly had to be put in place. Of course, at the time it seemed eminently sensible to make sure that doctors and patients were protected. As the noble Baroness rightly highlights, the unintended consequence of this has been a backlog in seeing other patients. One of the things we are doing is making sure that, as we roll out these community diagnostic centres and modernise primary care, we can see patients in a more timely way. The GP does not necessarily have to be the first point of contact.

[Lord Stirrup (CB)]

My Lords, how are the Government measuring and reporting retention levels of clinical staff in the NHS? This is one of the ways that will enable us to assess the effectiveness of the measures the Minister has said the Government are putting in place.

[Lord Kamall (Con)]

I thank the noble and gallant Lord for the question. The important point is that sometimes the assessment is done at a local level, sometimes it is done at an overall level and sometimes the department gathers the statistics. As we modernise and digitise the system, a lot more of that information will be able to be processed centrally, so that we can understand where we need to have better planning and to redeploy resources to meet the needs in certain areas.