Contribution
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship this morning, Mr Dowd. I thank the hon. Member for Christchurch (Sir Christopher Chope) for raising GP surgeries, which is a vital matter to so many of our constituents. That is because GP surgeries are the front door to our NHS, and visiting a GP represents far better value for taxpayers’ money than accident and emergency departments. That is why, since coming into office, fixing general practice has rightly taken up a lot of our bandwidth, energy and focus.
It is worth remembering that we inherited a system in total disarray, and a bizarre situation in which we simultaneously had a GP shortage and newly qualified GPs looking for work. I am proud of everything we have done to turn GP services around in the nine or 10 short months we have had. However, before I come on to that, let me address some of the hon. Gentleman’s points.
Ahead of this debate, I asked my office to get in touch with the integrated care board locally so that we had a fuller picture of what is happening on the ground. My understanding is that Burton surgery was previously a branch of Christchurch medical practice, which is just under two miles away. The surgery closed in August last year because the owners wanted to sell. Although the ICB did not approve of the closure, it recognised that it had little influence over the sale as GPs are independent practitioners.
I am informed that the local community were—as they often are—understandably unhappy with the news about changes to the services, and that the hon. Gentleman got in touch with Dorset ICB. When a veterinary business tried to buy the site, the application received over 100 objection letters and the sale did not go ahead. The ICB then received two further applications to renew the site, about which it considered a number of factors, as is normal practice: whether there is good access to surgeries in the area; what the impact would be on patients and on community needs; how it would affect the quality, equity and safety of provision; and how it might affect the stability and ability of other local GP services to run viable surgeries in their area.
I have been assured that the decision that Dorset ICB took was not taken lightly but based on the needs of and the benefits to all prospective patients in the area. The surgery catchment area for Burton is covered by Christchurch medical practice and Farmhouse surgery. As the hon. Gentleman outlined, reopening would have required additional costs, which were not justifiable given the financial challenges facing the NHS—something that we all understand. Consequently, Dorset ICB felt that those costs would reduce provision in the area and lead to significant financial pressures on other local surgeries, which could lead to further closures.
Dorset ICB has seen no degradation of services for patients since the surgery closed and the number of appointments has not decreased overall. I take the hon. Gentleman’s point about the numbers, and I do not know why that information is not available; I am happy to take that question back to the Department. Local MPs should have as much information as possible about services in their areas. These are taxpayer-funded services, so I will check as to why that information is not available. Dorset ICB has not received what it calls formal complaints from patients, but it has received communications from a local campaigning group, which is important. On balance, however, it decided that it could not reopen the practice.
On the point about housing needs, which I talked about for many years when I was an Opposition Member of Parliament, the Government absolutely understand the issue of additional demand and the challenge it poses to primary care infrastructure.