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General Practice (Northamptonshire)

The purpose of today's debate is not, from my perspective, a party political one. I am a Back-Bench Member of Parliament, I speak my own mind on these issues and I am disappointed, to be blunt, with the Minister's tone in these opening exchanges. For me, the purpose of this debate is to draw his attention, as a Minister of the Crown, to the future of general practice in Northamptonshire. I suggest that whether I am a Conservative or Labour Member, many of the things that I shall say today are comments that any MP would want to put to him. One of the biggest and most important issues affecting GPs in Northamptonshire is the fact that it is a designated growth area. The population of the county is due to increase by between one third and one half in the next 15 to 20 years. I should like the Minister to clarify how PCTs are funded in that respect. It is certainly the impression of local GPs that PCT funding is determined by the number of patients who are registered with GPs rather than the actual number of people resident in the area. One statistic that I have been given is that there are an estimated 20,000 unregistered patients in the county town of Northampton alone. Such people tend to make extensive and often inappropriate use of accident and emergency facilities at a cost to the PCT under the payment by results plan, which means that resources that could be provided to local GP practices are not being provided. The Government's own statistics, given in answer to one of my parliamentary written questions, told me that the average practice list size of a GP practice in Northamptonshire is 8,000 patients, which is 30 per cent. above the national average of 6,000. Even before the very rapid increase in population that the Government have planned for Northamptonshire, general practice list sizes in the county are already one third above the national average.