Recovering Access to Primary Care

Lord Bellingham Excerpts

Tuesday 9th May 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Markham (Con)]

The noble Lord makes a very good point. It is really making sure that the independents can play a very important role. It is, where necessary, making sure that whole-estate planning takes that into account. A lot of the work I have been doing with Minister O’Brien—he heads the GP space while I look after the capital space—is looking at how we can create the sorts of models where you can put pharmacies alongside GP surgeries, in many cases, and make sure that that capability is there. I freely admit that capital is at a premium within the system, so we have to be creative in the ways we use it, but the noble Lord is absolutely correct that this is a key way to make sure we have a network of independent pharmacies that can really serve their local community.

[Lord Bellingham (Con)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for the Statement and put on record my gratitude to him and other junior Ministers who played a very important part in making sure that this initiative has been brought to fruition. I pay tribute to the local surgery in my own community in Norfolk, the Great Massingham and Docking surgery, where the receptionists are invariably incredibly patient and polite to everyone and the doctors are quite outstanding—they have a lot of very satisfied people in the community because of their attitude to local people who may have ailments. But, obviously, they are under pressure, and that is why I welcome the Government’s announcement on Pharmacy First and on recruiting new GPs. Can my noble friend tell the House whether the Government’s commitment to recruit an extra 6,000 GPs by the end of this Parliament is on course? Has the number of GPs in training increased? Can he just clarify those two points?

As the noble Lord, Lord Boateng, pointed out a moment ago, pharmacies are often at the centre of communities. Apart from anything else, pharmacists often have a really strong relationship with patients because they see them on a regular basis, understand their needs and see them consistently—which, unfortunately, is not always the case with doctors. That is why I support the Pharmacy First initiative, which could be a lifeline to a lot of pharmacies that are under pressure. They will be able to prescribe many more medicines, but can my noble friend tell the House whether they will be able to prescribe antibiotics for some of the conditions he mentioned? If that is the case, that would be a very positive extension to the services that they provide.

[Lord Markham (Con)]

I thank my noble friend. As evidence of the good work that receptionists do under trying circumstances, in a recent survey 91% of patients said that their needs were met. On the target of having 6,000 extra GPs by the end of this Parliament, currently we have increased the number by 2,000 but, in all honesty, I think the feeling is that we will struggle to meet the 6,000 target—I believe that is something that Sajid Javid, as Minister, said before. But there is a 50% increase in the number of graduate trainees since 2014, with more than 4,000 currently in training. So we have made steps in the right direction, albeit not as far as we would hope.

On the supply of antibiotics, the idea behind this is that there will be certain agreed treatments that the pharmacist will be able to give. Clearly, UTIs is an example where you often need antibiotics to clear those up, and in those circumstances there will be agreed treatments that pharmacists can give: provided that, in the pharmacist’s judgment, the symptoms warrant it, the pharmacist will be able to enable the supply of antibiotics. On all those, this is a very positive way forward.