NHS

Whilst our Prime Minister entertains British industry with Peppa Pig and simulating car engines, the NHS is under real pressure. The UK has entered a third phase of excess deaths during the pandemic with more people dying than expected. The figure is not readily explained by coronavirus. The new phase of excess deaths raises the possibility that since the summer more people have been losing their lives as a result of strains on the NHS, and lack of early diagnosis of serious illness.

An area of great concern is our GPs. Recent NHS figures for England show that only four in ten (40.3%) of people were able to get a same-day appointment with their GP in October, a two-year low. Over one in four (28.8%) people had to wait eight days or more for an appointment, the highest level since before the pandemic in February 2020. My experience suggests routine appointments often take three weeks.

Why are things getting worse? In the Hampshire area we have 905 GPs with 1851 patients per GP. Since 2015 we have seen an increase of 9% patients per GP but our trained GPs have decreased by 6%. Health Secretary Sajid Javid recently admitted that the government is not on course to meet its target of recruiting 6,000 more GPs by 2025.

Meanwhile ambulance response times were at their longest in October since current records began in 2017. The average response time for the most urgent cases was 9 mins and 20 secs against a target of 7 mins, whilst perhaps more telling the second most serious category (53 minutes and 54 seconds) was three times the target average of 18 minutes. Ambulance services are picking up the fallout from lack of GP services.

People across a country are struggling to get a GP appointment because of the government's dismal failure to recruit more doctors. This is having a devastating knock-on impact on our hospitals, as people who cannot get a GP appointment desperately turn up at their local A&E or instead ring up for an ambulance

Boris Johnson must urgently get a grip of this crisis ahead of the challenging winter months ahead. People want to see concrete action now so they can get an appointment with their GP when they need one. All we get are more broken promises from a Conservative government that is running our health service into the ground. Demand better.