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Access to NHS Services

My hon. Friend is absolutely right: we can go much further as regards the 10,000 pharmacies in this country offering services. We can go much further on access to primary care services, too; I will come to that subject in a moment. Thanks to medical developments, we are all living longer, and the number of people over 85 is set to increase by two thirds by 2026. Technological advances mean that operations that were once considered miraculous are increasingly commonplace. I cite the case of the heart transplant given last week to 18-month-old baby Zoe Chambers, who is from Hull in my constituency. We now live in a far more consumer-oriented culture, where customers rightly expect goods and services to be provided at times convenient to them. That leads me directly to the issue of access, which is the topic of today’s debate. We need to ensure that our provision is flexible and responsive enough to meet the demands of hard-working families, who face competing demands on their time. In 1997, surgeries were frequently shut at the times when patients needed them most, such as lunch time, after work and at weekends. It was hard to make an appointment, and the surgeries were often in a squalid state of disrepair. Since then, more than 3,000 GP premises have been rebuilt or refurbished. Nine out of 10 patients can now see a GP within two working days, and more than three quarters of patients say that they are seen as soon as they think it necessary. In 1997, just half of patients said the same thing.