Oral Answers to Questions

Neil Parish Excerpts

Tuesday 26th April 2011 Commons Chamber

[Paul Burstow]

My right hon. Friend of course is more than happy to go to all sorts of places to talk to people about the health reforms. However, local government fully supports this particular proposal and sees it as a vital innovation for the involvement of local government in the health service. It will be transparent because it will be part of the local authority and will meet in open.

[Neil Parish (Tiverton and Honiton) (Con)]

11. What recent assessment he has made of progress by GP pathfinder consortia in delivering improvements in NHS services.

[The Secretary of State for Health (Mr Andrew Lansley)]

I am delighted that nearly 90% of the country is now covered by pathfinder consortia, including my hon. Friend’s constituency, where the eastern Devon consortia chairs board pathfinder is up and running. I know that one area on which these emerging consortia are focusing is providing better, more flexible services for patients in community settings. We are supporting all the pathfinders through the pathfinder learning network, which is already showing a wide range of examples of where clinician-led commissioning is delivering benefits for patients.

[Neil Parish]

I welcome the Secretary of State saying that the consortium in my constituency is up and running. Will he also take this opportunity to ensure that through these consortia patients can get better access to their doctors? Labour paid doctors a great deal more money, but patients actually got less access to their doctors.

[Mr Lansley]

That, indeed, will be one of the areas on which the quality and outcomes framework for individual GP practices will focus. In addition, however, through the commissioning outcomes framework for the NHS as a whole, one area in which we want to see continuing improvement in quality is patient experience and outcomes as reported by patients. GPs and their clinical colleagues will therefore be incentivised continuously to improve quality.