GP Appointment Availability

Martyn Day Excerpts

Tuesday 26th October 2021 Westminster Hall

[Martyn Day (Linlithgow and East Falkirk) (SNP)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Robertson, and I am grateful to the hon. Member for Beaconsfield (Joy Morrissey) for securing this debate. She gave a good summary of the issue and I am grateful for her personal testimony. I think all our communities have experienced different levels of satisfaction or otherwise with GP services.

Let me start by paying tribute to the work done by GPs and primary care staff, who, along with their colleagues throughout the NHS, have performed admirably and heroically throughout the pandemic. It would be completely wrong for anyone to claim otherwise. Incidents of harassment of GPs and medical staff—such as the Watford incident, where staff were locked into a consulting room until they agreed to carry out a face-to-face consultation, and an attack in Manchester that left a GP with a fractured skull and other staff with deep lacerations—are unacceptable and should be condemned. I trust that the Minister and every MP will join me in that condemnation.

I cannot help but fear, however, that the UK Government’s harmful rhetoric, including their threat to shame GPs for not returning to face-to-face appointments, may have played a part in such shameful behaviour. The Government must support GPs and not threaten and shame them. While the pandemic remains, it is safer for medical staff and patients to continue hybrid screening and appointments—I stress hybrid. Forcing face-to-face appointments too soon is unsafe and may harm patient care.

For many patients, the choice of using e-health and telehealth solutions to contact their GPs initially has been convenient, but clearly it is not appropriate for all. Some individuals and certain conditions would benefit from a face-to-face appointment and it is important that we get that balance right. However, forcing an immediate return to face-to-face appointments will not necessarily benefit the patients and it may harm efficiency of care.

GPs in England have overwhelmingly rejected the DHSC England plan for forced face-to-face appointments, with more than 90% saying they would increase workload and therefore decrease the amount of time caring for patients. The Royal College of GPs in Scotland said last month:

“We believe that there is a key role in modern general practice for remote consultations and would oppose any moves to deny patients this option of accessing care by reinstating pre-pandemic ways of working”.

It went on to say:

“Instead of arbitrary targets which we feel would not benefit either patients or the wider health service, we need to see concerted and urgent action in a range of areas that would improve general practice and ultimately the standards of care that patients that receive … Key to this is the need for credible workforce planning to ensure that we have an appropriately staffed service”.

That is an absolutely fundamental point. It may be worth mentioning that GP training recruitment in Scotland this year has been the most successful year of any of the last five, with 99% of GP training posts filled so far and with one recruitment round remaining. Already Scotland has a record number of GPs, with more per 100,000 of the population than the rest of the UK. We are on track to increase that number by a further 800 posts by the end of 2027. For comparative purposes, that is currently 94 for every 100,000 people, compared with 76 in England, 75 in Wales and 72 in Northern Ireland.

The BMA said on 15 September:

“Any arbitrary timetables or targets for face-to-face patient consultations would be both unrealistic, demoralising and potentially counterproductive, leaving those desperately in need of appointments waiting even longer”.

I am pleased that the Scottish Government will not be pressuring GPs into unsafe early reopening, just because some politicians and some sections of the press want to insist on it.

In conclusion, the UK Government should match the Scottish Government’s stance and insist on a safety and efficiency-first position, not bow to demands of the right-wing press, which will sacrifice patient and staff safety without providing any benefits to our patients. The key to this issue is getting the balance right in terms of the hybrid approach, which of course requires adequate recruitment levels, which are absolutely fundamental.