Primary Care: North Essex

Debate between Will Quince and David Mowat

Tuesday 14th March 2017 Westminster Hall

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health (David Mowat)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hollobone. I congratulate the hon. Member for Clacton (Mr Carswell) both on obtaining the debate and on the lucid way he put forward his case. I thank my hon. Friends the Members for Colchester (Will Quince) and for Harwich and North Essex (Mr Jenkin) for their points, which I will try to answer.

There is an issue with the number of GPs in the CCG in that part of north Essex. I will talk a little about why that is the case and what we can do about it. It is very hard to make progress on a number of the issues that were raised without fixing that problem. We are short of GPs across the country, but we are particularly short in the North East Essex CCG. Let me give some numbers for context. There are 40 GP practices and a little over 210 GPs within the CCG, which covers 330,000 people. The CCG estimates that it is 28 GPs short. I spoke to it this afternoon, and I was told that if any GP wants to get a job in Clacton, it will not be a difficult process. Indeed, the figures for Clacton and the coast are marginally worse than those I have just given.

That is somewhat mitigated by the fact that the CCG has more nurses than the UK average. That might well be to do with the walk-in centres and minor injury units, which are nurse-orientated. I will come on to talk about how we can work in a slightly different way—this was implied by the remarks of the hon. Member for Clacton—by making use of other disciplines, such as pharmacists, physios, allied health professionals of different sorts and mental health professionals. The CCG now has 10 full-time pharmacists, and there is a plan to increase that number considerably between now and 2020. Frankly, it is easier to recruit pharmacists than GPs, but we need GPs too.

I will spend a little time talking about the reasons for that. I spoke to the CCG about them in some detail today. As the hon. Gentleman mentioned, Clacton has an older population, which causes problems, and there may be contractual issues relating to that, although the GP contract allows extra money for areas of deprivation and those with ageing populations. There are no training GP practices in Clacton, which puts it at a disadvantage, as GPs are likely less to go there as part of their training and then stay. It is also true that Clacton has a higher than average age demographic of GPs, so there is a higher tendency for them to retire, which exacerbates the situation. I concede that there is a problem, and I will talk about some of the things being doing about it. The hon. Gentleman used the phrase “jam tomorrow”, and I am afraid that some of it might sound a bit like that.

I want to draw attention to some of the things that the CCG in north Essex does well. We often talk about issues to do with locations—bricks and mortar—whether minor injury units or hospitals, but all MPs, including me, should properly evaluate our CCGs on the full set of published metrics. We have done an awful lot on transparency. I will just mention some of the things that the CCG does well. The hon. Gentleman’s CCG is well above the national average for cancer diagnosis in stage 1, for dementia care planning, for organising health checks for patients with learning disabilities, and for organising care packages for people with mental health episodes. I say that to put its issues in context. It is clearly true that there are difficulties with access and, to a lesser extent, with getting on lists in the first place.

The hon. Gentleman rightly made the point that we should be following the patient. We do a lot of work across the NHS and with every CCG to poll patients to ascertain how satisfied they are with the level of service they have received. North East Essex CCG received something like 82% patient satisfaction—lower than the national average. It is thought that the figures for Clacton are likely to be lower than the CCG average as a whole, so I will not hide behind that number.

In terms of what we are going to do about it, I will start by talking about some national initiatives—the comment about STPs related to that—and the need to invest more in primary care. There are two national initiatives that I want to mention. First, there is the GP five-year forward view. I know it sounds like jargon, but it redresses the persistent underinvestment in primary care over the past decade or so. Between now and 2020, there will be a 14% real increase in primary care across the country, which will manifest itself in the workforce and in different ways of working. That is real money; it is accepted by the British Medical Association’s general practitioners committee. It is very welcome, and frankly it has been a long time coming.

If we were designing an NHS today, with the sort of patient environment we have now, we would not design it around acute hospitals, as was done in 1948. We would design it much more around long-term conditions—diabetes, dementia, heart disease and so forth—which account for 70% of the NHS’s total cost and mean that much more can be done in the community. That is our very clear direction of travel.

[Will Quince]

Although I very much welcome those plans and the steps the Minister is hoping to take in relation to primary care, there is still very serious pressure on Colchester general hospital. I welcome last week’s Budget announcement of £100 million for triage services in accident and emergency units. Will the Minister give serious consideration to making Colchester general hospital a pilot for that, which would help to alleviate some of that pressure?

[David Mowat]

My hon. Friend may be relieved to hear that Colchester general hospital is not in my portfolio, but I will speak to my ministerial colleagues about it being a pilot and write to him.