Access to Primary Healthcare
Clive Jones Excerpts(1 year, 5 months ago)
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Clive Jones (Wokingham) (LD)
As we heard from my hon. Friend the Member for North Shropshire (Helen Morgan), general practice is the front door of the NHS, yet communities in my constituency, such as in Arborfield Green, go without any local primary care provision. This is an area that is growing by thousands, and my constituents expect to have access to GPs who provide timely and appropriate care. The unfortunate truth is, however, that there simply are not enough GPs.
We know where the fault lies. The Conservative party’s underfunding and poor workforce planning have led to a service in crisis, jeopardising the standard of care that patients receive. GP numbers have fallen, and £350 million has been cut from general practices in real terms since 2019. Each GP in my local ICB are is now responsible for, on average, 534 more patients than in 2016, and nearly 80% of GPs say that their workload is impacting patient safety. It is clear that this is not a sustainable system, but, sadly, we never hear an apology from those on the Conservative Benches—of whom there are five at the moment.
I would be grateful for the Minister’s view on the call from the Royal College of General Practitioners for an explicit reference to primary care infrastructure in the national planning policy framework. This, it argues, would strengthen the ability of local planning authorities to hold developers to account on social infrastructure, such as GP surgeries. I hope that the Minister will ask his colleagues at the Ministry for Housing, Communities and Local Government to consider the Royal College’s response, in order to ensure that places such as Arborfield do not lose out any longer, and to ensure that as Wokingham continues to build to Government guidelines, we have more GPs to cope with all the extra patients that the new building will bring.
Oral Answers to Questions
Clive Jones Excerpts(1 year, 5 months ago)
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Stephen Kinnock
We are absolutely committed to the three shifts: from hospital to community, from sickness to prevention and from analogue to digital. The sickness to prevention aspect is important in the question that the hon. Member raises. Treatable mental health conditions such as anxiety and depression should be identified early to prevent them from developing into something more serious and into a crisis, so I absolutely share the sentiment behind her question. They will be at the heart of our 10-year strategy for the future of our health.
Clive Jones (Wokingham) (LD)
The Minister for Care (Stephen Kinnock)
As identified in Lord Darzi’s review, primary care is broken. Satisfaction with GP services has fallen from a peak of 80% in 2009 to just 35% last year—a truly damning indictment of 14 years of Tory failure. We will rebuild general practice. We have invested £82 million to recruit 1,000 new GPs, we have launched our red tape challenge, and we are committed to improving continuity of care and ending the 8 am scramble. On primary care more broadly, we are committed to boosting the role of community pharmacies, enabling patients to be treated for certain conditions by their local pharmacists, without the need to see a GP.
Clive Jones
The Arborfield Green community in my Wokingham constituency has around 10,000 residents in new homes, with many more to come, but there is no local primary care provision. To see a GP, residents must travel to neighbouring villages, which are often inaccessible because of a lack of public transport. What steps will the Minister take to guarantee that there will be enough GPs in any major new developments that come down the line?
Stephen Kinnock
The hon. Member is absolutely right: there are seriously under-doctored areas of the country. Given the finite resources that we have, we must focus on areas with the greatest need. I would be more than happy to meet him to discuss how that might best be reflected in his constituency.
Maternity Services: Gloucestershire
Clive Jones Excerpts(1 year, 5 months ago)
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Clive Jones (Wokingham) (LD)
My local hospital, the Royal Berkshire hospital, is where my two children were born and many of our friends’ children were born. It has recently received an upgraded rating of good from the Care Quality Commission, and it is one of only nine organisations, out of 131, that got an upgrade to good over the last year, so I commend the Royal Berkshire leadership and staff for their diligence and dedication, and congratulate them on that result. Does my hon. Friend agree—
Sir Christopher Chope (in the Chair)
Order. Interventions should be short. If the hon. Gentleman wishes to make a speech, he can do so later. Let us hear the response to the intervention.