Health Services: Wantage and Didcot

Neil O'Brien Excerpts

Thursday 18th May 2023 Commons Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Care (Neil O’Brien)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Wantage (David Johnston) on securing this important debate. He mentioned in his remarks that there are limits on what he is allowed to say in this Chamber about certain aspects, particularly about how we marry up new housing with new GP surgeries, but none of us in Government are in any way strangers to his very strong views on the subject. The amount of work and campaigning that he has done on this issue is formidable, and I pay tribute to him for that.

I recognise the struggles that my hon. Friend’s constituents have reported in his survey in getting an appointment with their GP or dentist. Despite the efforts of general practice teams, who are now delivering something in the order of 10% more appointments every month than they were pre-pandemic—that is the equivalent of about 20 more appointments per working day, per surgery—demand is rising. We have about 30% more people over the age of 70 than we did in 2010. Those people tend to have about five times more appointments than younger people. Therefore, because of the ageing society and the effects of the pandemic, demand is rising. That is why we have listened and why we have taken action, including just last week publishing our primary care recovery plan to address some of these concerns.

Our plan is ambitious and it will modernise access to general practice—effectively the front door of our NHS. We want to end the 8 am rush for appointments and ensure that patients know how their requests will be handled the first time they contact their practice. To achieve that, we are investing the equivalent of £6,000 per practice to provide new technology, including modern digital phone systems so that people do not get engaged tones, and easier digital access so that many more issues can be dealt with online at a convenient time for the patient, which will free up phone lines for those who do need to call so that they always get through easily.

As my hon. Friend mentioned, we are expanding the role of community pharmacies in delivering primary care and investing up to £645 million to enable pharmacists to provide treatment for common conditions. Pharmacists will be able to supply prescription-only medicines and start courses of oral contraception for the first time. That will provide more choice for patients and be a convenient way of getting treated. It will also reduce the pressure on general practices, freeing up something in the order of 10 million appointments a year, again making it easier for my hon. Friend’s constituents to get through. We have started consulting the Pharmaceutical Services Negotiating Committee, with a view to introducing the new service by the end of the year.

We are continuing to cut bureaucracy to reduce the time that GPs have to spend on work that is not work that they need to be doing. The plan frees up approximately £37,000 per practice by cutting back targets and improving communication between GPs and hospitals—something that has been raised with me many times by GPs. Of course, we still need to deliver more appointments and, to do that, we need more staff. I am pleased to say that today, we have managed to deliver, ahead of schedule, our manifesto commitment to recruit 26,000 additional staff into general practice. Those extra staff are helping to deliver the 50 million extra appointments that we promised by March 2024. It is through both the additional staff that we have invested in and the very hard work of general practice teams, to whom I pay tribute, that they are already delivering 10% more appointments compared with 2019.

The recruitment and retention of general practitioners remains a big priority for us, including the retention of our wonderful experienced general practitioners. That is why we are helping to retain senior GPs by reforming pension rules—the No. 1 thing that the profession was asking us for—and lifting about 8,900 GPs out of annual tax charges.

My hon. Friend quite rightly raised some specific concerns about the provision of adequate services to meet the needs of new housing developments—something that is an issue in particularly desirable and fast-growing areas like that of my hon. Friend. I am very seized of this crucial issue, and we are working on it in real time.

Last week we announced that, as part of the GP plan, we would be making a series of reforms through the national planning policy framework and planning guidance changes to ensure that new housing always comes with the GP surgeries that are needed. That means changing the NPPF and planning guidance and, even before that, updating the planning obligations guidance to ensure that local planning authorities address primary care infrastructure, just as they do other infra- structure demands such as education.

On top of that, the Government will update guidance to encourage local planning authorities to engage with the local NHS—the local integrated care boards—on large sites that might create the need for extra primary care capacity. My hope is that a bigger chunk of the £7 billion a year that we are raising from housing developers will flow into new primary care facilities.

As my hon. Friend mentioned, local authorities have an unavoidable and crucial role in enforcing the delivery of the commitments that developers make and in ensuring, as they make and enforce their local plans, that what was promised is delivered. Wherever new development is planned, they must plan for the infrastructure that is needed alongside it. That is something local authorities absolutely must deliver for their constituents, and I am sorry to hear that there seems to be some trouble with that in his constituency.

My hon. Friend also mentioned challenges with dentistry; we are working on that very actively and will be publishing our plan for dentistry shortly. The reforms we made some months ago to enable dentists to do more—about 110% of their contracted work—and to split up the bands so that they are paid more fairly for the NHS work they do have been received well by the profession. About a fifth more people were seen by NHS dentists in the year to March compared with a year earlier, so we are starting to make progress, but we know there is more to do. To answer his question, I want to reassure him that we will be publishing our dentistry plan very shortly.

I thank my hon. Friend not just for his thoughtful speech today, but for all the work he has done to campaign on this issue ever since he was elected. He always makes a powerful case, both in the Chamber and behind the scenes, and he has many thoughtful ideas that are already influencing Government policy. I pay tribute to him for his work and I hope his constituents will soon see positive changes as part of our recovery plan.

Question put and agreed to.