Access to Primary Healthcare

Peter Prinsley Excerpts

Wednesday 16th October 2024 Commons Chamber

[Peter Prinsley (Bury St Edmunds and Stowmarket) (Lab)]

First, I must declare, as the shadow Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, the right hon. Member for Louth and Horncastle (Victoria Atkins), reminded me last week, that I am a surgeon. I have, therefore, an interest in this matter, but so do we all. The last Government should be truly ashamed of themselves. I see but one remaining Member—a colleague of mine—sitting on the Conservative Benches. General practice has been badly neglected. The public could see that. Surely the Government must have known it. Certainly patients could see it, given their scramble on the phone at 8 o’clock, hoping not to be at the end of the queue for one of the very few appointments with one of the very few doctors.

During my career, I have seen the number of hospital doctors and consultants increase many times, but we have seen very little increase in GP numbers, and now we live with the consequences: too many exhausted GPs, many leaving the profession altogether or retiring much too soon, and now the spectre of a two-tier GP system, as private GP services expand rapidly all over the place. We can, and will, do better than this. We already are doing better, with plans to recruit many qualified GPs without jobs into practices without doctors.

Today, we must look after our GPs as never before. We will move much of our care out of our hospitals and into the community, but it is on GPs that we will depend to achieve that. GP services will expand to provide community investigations, facilities, specialist and surgical services, and much more, as we rightly adopt the new Government’s agenda of moving care out of hospitals. We must ensure that GPs have the very best IT and technology. We must connect the GP IT with the hospital IT, so that I can see the same record as the GP; the nonsense of typed letters and fax machines should end completely.

I am, however, optimistic. Scientific advances continue to astonish us. We know what we have to do, and we have the determination to do it. Doctors and patients will support this. Let us get to work. General practice is the best of the NHS, and we must support it.