Accident and Emergency

Toby Perkins Excerpts

Wednesday 18th December 2013 Commons Chamber

[Toby Perkins (Chesterfield) (Lab)]

Hon. Members will remember that when the Prime Minister wanted to detoxify the Tory brand, he said that he could spell out his priorities in three letters—NHS—but people in Chesterfield have seen through that cruel joke. Opinion polls show us that the importance of the national health service is going up as the Government’s record is so terribly exposed.

I did a survey across Chesterfield this summer and spoke to people about a range of issues, as I did back in 2009. Back then, satisfaction with the NHS was clear, but now 37% say that GP services have got worse, and just 12% say they have got better. Only 8% say that they think the NHS has got better since 2010; almost 50% think it is getting worse.

I want to focus on the part of the motion that deals with the difficulty of accessing GP services, which is one of the primary causes of those figures. Some 42% of people who appear in A and E have previously attempted to contact GP services. Hon. Members might remember my raising the case of Jemma Hill on 22 October with the Secretary of State. Her GP referred her to a specialist, who recommended hip arthroscopy surgery. She was then told that her clinical commissioning group would not fund the surgery. The Secretary of State promised to look into the matter if I wrote to him. I wrote to him on 23 October but still there is no response. Jemma Hill is still in agony. She sees a fragmented national health service leaving her behind.

The problems in the NHS, and in GP services in particular, are acute in the Staveley area. A recent Care Quality Commission report found that the Rectory Road and Grange health centres failed on five different criteria. I surveyed almost every house in Middlecroft and Inkersall, which are parts of Staveley, and had hundreds of responses. Eighty-six per cent. said that services were unsatisfactory or very poor.

I have here some of the comments of the people who responded. One says, “I don’t bother going to the doctors anymore. I could never get an appointment. I simply self-diagnose on Google.” Someone else said that they are entirely dependent on locums, meaning that when their scans or results come back, the GP is not there. One patient said that a GP broke down in tears in front of them. Another patient said that no one had contacted them after their blood test results. In fact, they should have been urgently sent to hospital—subsequently, they discovered they had cancer.

One person said that they waited eight weeks for a GP appointment. When they eventually got one, they were told that they had a hernia and were sent straight to hospital. Another person waited two weeks for an appointment for a repeat prescription, meaning that they did not have their prescription for more than a week. One 90-year-old said that they had to get a taxi to the surgery and had to queue outside at 8 o’clock in the morning.

I met a partner at that GP surgery and we discussed how it is desperately struggling to recruit people. There is a widespread GP recruitment crisis. I was told that a huge number of GPs have retired, either because they are disillusioned or simply because they want to get out of the service. Forty-three per cent. of GPs told a Pulse survey that they will retire earlier than they had intended because of how disillusioned they are.

My hon. Friend the Member for Wigan (Lisa Nandy) spoke about the massive impact the Government’s cuts to care services have had on A and E, but there is also a huge crisis in general practice. The people of Staveley, and people across the country, do not have proper access to a GP service. The problem is getting worse and it is exacerbating the problem in A and E. The people suffering are not only the brave heroes who work so hard in the national health service, but those in the most deprived communities in our constituencies. It is a disgrace.