Access to Primary Healthcare

Luke Taylor Excerpts

Wednesday 16th October 2024 Commons Chamber

[Luke Taylor (Sutton and Cheam) (LD)]

I am in general agreement with others about the state of the NHS. The NHS was a Liberal idea, delivered by the Labour party, then broken by the Conservatives. The attendance among Conservative Members at today’s debate shows just how much interest they have in trying to fix it. The Liberal Democrats will act as a responsible, constructive Opposition and work with the Government to fix the NHS’s many problems.

[Joy Morrissey (Beaconsfield) (Con)]

On that point, will the hon. Member give way?

[Luke Taylor]

No, I will not.

Solving the crisis in access to primary care matters not just to patients facing traumatic situations, but to our GP surgeries, which are striving to do their best under the most difficult of circumstances. Our hard-working GPs dedicate years to training and work hard at what they do because they are passionate about being there for their patients. For too long they have been let down, and it is our job now to give them the means to continue doing their remarkable job.

We know the difficulties. Too often, appointments are not available, and patients and staff experience frustration and conflicting priorities when attempting to access services. For patients, that often means resorting to dialling 111, or even 999, and attending A&E when issues escalate. That puts further pressure on our already overstretched NHS emergency facilities, which too often have to deal with issues that could have been fixed by preventive primary care if patients could have accessed it in a timely way.

GPs in Sutton and Cheam tell me that requests for appointments are triaged because of the level of demand. Decisions have to be made to prioritise patients with increasingly complex needs, often with very little information available. Unsurprisingly, that is affecting GPs’ mental health and making it increasingly difficult to retain experienced staff, further eroding the ability of practices to keep up with demand.

The ask from GPs in my constituency is simple: the Minister must act quickly to increase their budgets, and offer certainty to allow them to plan ahead financially after a sustained period of real terms cuts in funding. That will allow them to hire and retain more staff at competitive wages during this cost of living crisis, lower the collective workload and treat more patients more effectively.

It is not enough to simply offer more training places, or incentives to train, if surgeries cannot employ the GPs who are already qualified and available. That is a particular problem in my constituency. If the NHS cannot compete with the private sector on pay, or with overseas Governments, who attract our doctors with improved conditions, a lower workload and possibly even better weather conditions—legend has it that there are places that have even more sunshine than Bournemouth —then it cannot hope to retain GPs. We must make it easier for foreign students who have studied and qualified in the UK to get the right to remain after their course, should they wish to do so.

As the new Government search for ways to boost growth, I say that it is here in front of them. There is no better investment in our future growth than good-quality primary healthcare, keeping patients healthy, able to provide for themselves and their families, and living healthy and fulfilling lives.