Patients are struggling to see a GP. Record numbers had to wait more than a month for an appointment last year, while millions couldn’t get an appointment at all. It means serious conditions are going missed. This is not the fault of GPs, but the Conservatives, who have cut thousands of doctors from general practice in the last decade. Labour will double medical school places, paid for by abolishing non-doms, but it will take time to train the GPs we need. Reform must also be part of the answer.
It won’t be news to most patients that the NHS could work better. Many people feel that they are passed from pillar to post, made to attend unnecessary appointments, or asked to inconvenience their lives for no good reason. For their part, GPs recognise that they have too much on their plate.
Your editorial (14 February) notes that patients can already go direct to sexual health clinics, as well as to physiotherapists in some parts of the country, without seeing a GP. In Greater Manchester, where lung cancer is the biggest killer, patients with ongoing conditions can now get walk-in chest X-rays. Why should opticians who spot a problem have to send patients back to their GP for a referral to an eye specialist, instead of referring them directly? Far from replacing general practice, allowing patients to directly access specialists in a few specific cases could free up GPs to see more patients.
Those who cannot afford to go private are paying the heaviest price for the crisis in the NHS today. To prevent millions of working-class patients being left behind in a two-tier healthcare system, we need a change from the status quo. Labour is determined to reform the health service so that everyone is cared for on time.
Wes Streeting MP
Shadow health secretary
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