I beg to move,
That leave be given to bring in a Bill to require the Secretary of State to appoint an independent reviewer to prepare a quarterly report containing an assessment of primary care services; to require the Secretary of State to lay before Parliament each report prepared by the independent reviewer; to require such reports to include the independent reviewer’s assessment of any measures taken to improve general practice services, dental services, community pharmacy services, optometry services, and mental health services; and for connected purposes.
Primary care services across the country are in crisis. People cannot get a GP appointment when they need one, some pharmacies are closing, people are resorting to DIY dentistry, and waiting lists for mental health appointments are sky high. The Government point to their recent long-term workforce plan as evidence that they are taking action, but that plan is only partially funded and will do nothing to increase staff levels now. Perhaps if the Government had not spent a year whipping their MPs to vote against any attempts to put a workforce plan into law, they might have made some progress, but we are where we are and it is legitimate for the British public to expect a Government who can plan for the long term while taking more immediate measures.
To be blunt, it is clear to me that MPs on both sides of the House are losing patience and are worried about the lack of urgency and action from the Government in fixing the front door to our NHS. The Bill seeks to force the Government to come clean about the challenges facing primary care health services specifically, such as GPs and dentists, by appointing an independent reviewer to report on the state and condition of primary care services every three months so that we can hold the Government’s feet to the fire on progress.
The Bill cannot come soon enough for patients. Let me start by detailing some of the urgent problems in GP services using a story that I have received from Gareth in Wimbledon. One morning recently, Gareth developed sudden loss of vision in the entire left field in both eyes, rendering him partially blind. Gareth tried to get an appointment with his GP, but due to a lack of appointments that day and a non-existent online booking system, he was instructed to call at 8 am the following morning. It was not until the next day that he managed to get an urgent referral for a brain MRI scan, which confirmed that Gareth had suffered a small stroke. With all strokes, the first 72 hours are critical to reduce the chance of subsequent strokes. His GP was undoubtedly dealing with hundreds of other urgent cases that day, but for Gareth, losing 24 hours due to a lack of capacity at his local GP could have been catastrophic. That is the real-world impact of the Government’s failure to recruit and retain GPs, and their failure to invest in IT infrastructure.
Let us remember that back in 2019 the Government promised to deliver 6,000 more GPs. Not only did they break that promise, but the number of fully qualified GPs has fallen by more than 900 since they made it. Those falling numbers have hit some areas harder than others. In places such as Somerset, the falling number of GPs is causing a shortage of appointments. Indeed, the number of GPs has fallen by 50 since 2016 in the area, and the number of patients per GP has increased by a massive 400. Shockingly, that is far higher than in the vast majority of England. In my county of Hertfordshire, there are now 2,203 patients per GP. I have heard from Denise, who spent the best part of the day on hold before giving up and trying the online booking system, which again turned out to be non-existent. While she was on hold for hours on the phone to her GP, by contrast it took just two minutes for Denise to book an online appointment at Specsavers. Everybody knows that the technology exists; it just has not been funded for our GP services.