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Family Doctor Services

I am grateful to my hon. Friend. She may have heard me refer to the GPs coming together in Macclesfield, which demonstrates what is possible if they are given the opportunity to commission services. We are not saying that there should not be change, but that it must be driven by the needs of an area. That is why we make it absolutely clear in our motion that we are opposed to a one-size-fits-all, top-down system that is not responsive to local health needs and circumstances. My hon. Friend and her very hon. Friend fight hard for the needs of their area, as can be seen in the way that they have fought not only for the GPs there but for Macclesfield district general hospital when it was threatened with reconfigurations. The Government's polyclinic plan will be the triumph of the one-size-fits-all approach and bureaucracy in place of clinical evidence and professionally-led—clinician-led—services. I am sorry that Government Front Benchers, in their amendment to our motion, cannot even bring themselves to support the family doctor service. They removed that from the motion where they could have left it in. In their amendment, they propagate the fallacy that the interests of GPs and patients are opposed, but they are not—GPs and patients have common interests, and patients trust GPs. There is an overwhelming sense of trust in GPs, while 97 per cent. of GPs have now reached the point where they have no confidence in the Government. That is, I am afraid, a message that the Government really should have listened to. They cannot even bring themselves to mention in their amendment the benefit of practice-based commissioning, which two years ago was a key health reform. I am afraid that ignorance and ideology make a fatal combination. The Secretary of State has picked up the ideology of centralisation and combined it with an ignorance of general practice. When I asked about two months ago how many GP practices the Secretary of State had visited, the Minister of State, the hon. Member for Exeter (Mr. Bradshaw), told me that the Secretary of State had visited one GP practice—[Interruption.] I am told that it is now two.