GP Appointment Availability

Debate between Margaret Greenwood and Chris Green

Tuesday 26th October 2021 Westminster Hall

[Chris Green (Bolton West) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Robertson. It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for York Central (Rachael Maskell), who makes important points in her speech. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Beaconsfield (Joy Morrissey) on securing the debate and making many compelling arguments. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Minister on taking her position on the Front Bench. She is one of a small number of individuals in Parliament who has recent frontline experience and I am sure she will bring that to bear in her role.

GP appointments are an important issue about which there have been concerns for many years. The principal concern at the moment relates to coronavirus and the lockdown. We cannot avoid that or simply touch on the subject, then concentrate on a wealth of other concerns. We have to focus on that issue as the prime driver of the current problems in the sector.

The Chancellor has put forward substantial resources, but more are always needed to make sure that resources are available for the national health service and for general practitioners. More needs to be done, and I am sure that, in the coming months and year or so, more resources will come forward.

I am here to raise the concerns of my constituents who are increasingly worried. At the beginning of the coronavirus lockdown, many people chose not to take up available GP or hospital appointments, but many of those conditions that have not been investigated or checked in the last 19 months are now far worse. The pressure and demand on hospitals and GPs are more severe. People are increasingly less frightened of coronavirus but more frightened about when they will get to see their family doctor, who is now difficult to see.

People are told by their GP receptionist to call at 8 o’clock, or earlier in some areas, but they have to make call after call after call for half an hour or 45 minutes. They cannot get through until it is too late and they are told to do the same tomorrow. That is happening day in, day out. Many people are now going to accident and emergency. For a long period at the beginning of the pandemic, A&Es were quiet because people were worried about going and getting coronavirus, but the situation has changed radically. People cannot access their GP surgeries and they are going to A&E, but it is far more difficult to get the service there too.

The system is coming under significant and increasing pressure, which is piling up as we head into winter. It is not just coronavirus. There is an expectation that the pressure from other respiratory viruses will mount up along with, as I mentioned, conditions that have not been checked or investigated for all those months such as cancer and other life-threatening conditions.

We have heard about elective care for issues such as cataracts and hip replacements. In the scheme of things, when we are thinking about life and death, they may seem relatively minor but they have a dramatic impact on people’s standard of living. The situation has negatively affected all those discretionary care items, but they have to be addressed too.

[Margaret Greenwood]

The hon. Gentleman is talking about rationing and what is happening in the wider system. With the Health and Care Bill, we are moving away from a national health service to 42 integrated care systems that will all have to balance their books every year under tight financial controls and will all have different strategies. Does he share my concern that that will embed the postcode lottery and increase the rationing of care? Have his constituents commented on that and do they share those concerns?

[Chris Green]

The hon. Lady makes some important points about the Bill, but the postcode lottery is already there. Most people view the national health service as a one-size-fits-all service that provides the same service wherever they are in the land, but that is not true and perhaps never has been. Access to medicines is very variable and IVF is a good example of something for which different areas have different agendas, policies and accessibilities. We all know that there is already a postcode lottery.

I do think that NHS England is too large an organisation. I was not intending to talk about this, but I was hopeful about health and social care devolution in Greater Manchester. The Mayor could have taken that up and championed it, but he has not made a single speech on the subject—he has not touched it. Having seen the failure of that devolution, the Government are now looking at other mechanisms to champion the cause of better accountability—

[Margaret Greenwood]

rose—

[Chris Green]

I am sorry, I have very little time—where local leaders may be able to champion the cause of better delivery, with organisations in a sufficiently large area in which they can make a difference, but which are close enough to people that local needs can be respected and identified. Different areas are often so very different.

About 5.5 million people are on hospital waiting lists. That is an extraordinary figure. However, there have been about 7 million fewer GP to hospital referrals during the pandemic. If we extrapolate from those figures, we have roughly 13 million people on the hospital waiting list. We need to get the GP service sorted out as soon as possible. It is appalling. I am disappointed in the British Medical Association for threatening strikes. The health system, the unions and the Government need to get together and deal with those problems as soon as possible.

I was concerned about the renewal of the Coronavirus Act 2020 because I know what that will symbolise to the civil service, the health system, the education system and wider society: that we have not and should not yet return to normal. As long as the Coronavirus Act is in place, I can see that the wider system of state, including GPs’ surgeries, will not return to normal. That has to be changed and normal service must resume as soon as possible.