Oral Answers to Questions

Sally-Ann Hart Excerpts

Tuesday 28th January 2020 Commons Chamber

[Tom Randall (Gedling) (Con)]

1. What steps he is taking to improve access to GPs.

[Sally-Ann Hart (Hastings and Rye) (Con)]

4. What steps he is taking to improve access to GPs.

[Richard Fuller (North East Bedfordshire) (Con)]

6. What steps he is taking to improve access to GP surgeries in North East Bedfordshire constituency.

--- Later in debate ---

[Matt Hancock]

Obviously this is an incredibly important subject, and I know the frustration many families feel at not being able to access a GP appointment when they need it. We have a whole-scale programme of work to improve access. This includes recruiting 6,000 more GPs and 26,000 primary care staff other than GPs— increasingly patients at GP surgeries can be treated by nurses—and increasingly enabling people, especially those who find it difficult to travel, to use technology to get the treatment they need.

[Sally-Ann Hart]

Hastings has a shortage of salaried GPs and GP services—locum GPs are available, at the right price. Will the Secretary of State please outline what steps he is taking to increase the number of salaried, rather than locum, GPs and GP services in Hastings and Rye?

[Matt Hancock]

My hon. Friend is right to ask. It is incredibly important that we get the right number of GPs, not least to reduce the amount spent on locums, who can be very expensive and often do not know the local population as well as salaried GPs. Her local clinical commissioning group is developing a new-to-practice fellowship in Hastings for GPs starting out in practice in order to encourage more doctors into practice and then to support them. It is also working with primary care networks so that more can become GP trainers and take on students. We are expanding the numbers going into GP training—there were record numbers last year—but I want the numbers to go up again and to make sure that Hastings gets the GPs it needs.