Health and Social Care Update

Viscount Stansgate Excerpts

Monday 10th October 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Markham (Con)]

I thank the noble Baroness for reminding me that I failed to reply to that point earlier and for giving me the opportunity to do so, but I will need to investigate further. As I say, I do not have immediate knowledge of this issue, but I undertake to come back to the noble Baroness with a reply.

[Viscount Stansgate (Lab)]

My Lords, I welcome the Minister to the Dispatch Box. I am sorry I missed his first outing earlier today; in fact, I had a medical appointment. Whatever the definition of “challenge”, it must include the position of a Minister representing the Department of Health on the Front Bench of this House—so good luck. The Statement makes the bold claim that up to a million GP appointments can be freed by

“changing funding rules to give freedoms to GPs to boost the number of staff to support their practice.”—[Official Report, Commons, 22/9/22; col. 832.]

Can the Minister explain exactly what that means?

[Lord Markham (Con)]

I thank the noble Viscount for his good luck wishes. I do not understand completely the economics of the doctor’s surgery yet. I want to get my head around that, because I understand that a surgery needs to be set up so that it can be a successful business for them and can have the proper infrastructure. I am very interested in the dentistry field as well; as I said, I have an interest in terms of my wife. But I realise that in a lot of these situations, you are asking doctors and dentists, who are trained to be excellent medics, to effectively set up their own business. That is a quite different thing and demands quite different skill sets. I believe that we need to have a package of support to help them in this respect. As part of that, we need to understand exactly what funding can be used and whether it gives them the headroom—for want of a better word—to allow them to do those elements and have the support staff in the numbers they need. Understanding further this area is on my to-do list, and I would like to get back to the noble Viscount as soon as I can.