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Family Doctor Services

I wish to start by paying tribute to GP Professor Dr. Brian McGuinness who retired this week as the chairman of the Society of Medical Writers. He is plain old Dr. McGuinness to me and he epitomises the type of GP that we all talk about. He was the ultimate family GP. I have not seen him for about 20 years, but he established one of the first large GP practices that I was aware of, in a socially deprived area in the north-west. That practice encompassed many of the services that we have been talking about with regard to polyclinics. His practice was not a polyclinic—it did not have a fancy title—but it was a good practice providing a good service to the local community, commensurate with its needs. The practice had a good patients forum that met regularly and advised the GPs—many GPs do take advice from patients and local patient groups. The practice had seven or eight GPs and provided adequate services to the local community and was well respected. Dr. McGuinness was possibly one of the most highly regarded GPs I have ever known, especially in the socially deprived area in which he practised. He recently received a lifetime achievement award, but it is to his credit that he has vowed to continue to work to encourage GPs and other medics to write about their experiences. I therefore begin by paying tribute to GP Professor Dr. Brian McGuinness, who is one of the best of men as well as one of the best doctors I have ever encountered. In preparation for this debate, I spoke to some of my local GPs and I want to feed back some of the comments that they made. As their MP, my job is to represent the opinion of all my constituents, and my GPs have some very strong opinions about what is happening and the Government's proposals. They are unanimous in being incredibly angry and they feel undermined and persecuted by the Government. It all stems from the much spun pay rise that GPs received in 2004. It is very rarely mentioned that that pay rise brought GPs' pay to an acceptable level, given their training, experience, commitment and hours. Before the pay rise, GPs were one of the lowest paid professions, so it was right to give them that pay rise and bring their pay to that level. I would not be surprised if the Department of Health had a unit solely devoted to spinning against GPs. We have seen some ludicrous headlines in the tabloids recently, but they did not dream them up. They did not come from GPs either. Those headlines were spun somewhere in the Department of Health. It was preposterous to have stories about GPs earning £250,000 on the front page of national newspapers, and that did GPs no good. As I said when I intervened on the Secretary of State earlier, GPs represent the most cost-effective and efficient branch of the health service. They cost £20 per consultation, even for long consultations. As I said, the 2004 pay rise brought GPs pay to a reasonable level. Since then, they have had a 0 per cent. pay rise for three years. Which other profession would put up with having a pay rise that just brought them back into line with what they should have been earning, followed by a pay freeze in the next three years?