Dr Ben Spencer

I entirely agree with my right hon. Friend about the use of AI to improve productivity in the NHS, and with what he has said about general practices. I generally take a neutral, honest-broker approach when people raise concerns about general practices. Of course it is important for us to ensure that our practices are performing well, to support them, and to respond to our constituents’ concerns more broadly. However, given that the bulk of care is coming through general practice—and I was interested to hear, in recent days, about the renewed focus on patient choice, particularly in respect of secondary and tertiary care—I think that one of the challenges posed by our current general practice system relates to the absence of patient choice. Effectively, general practices, which, as the Minister will know, are private organisations, have a monopoly in terms of the patients who are in their catchment area. It is very difficult for patients to move to different practices when the ones that they are currently using are not meeting their needs: when seeking an appointment with a GP, they are stuck with their own practice, or else they must go through various mechanisms to obtain care elsewhere.