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Out-of-Hours Care

My right hon. Friend is right. That can result in unnecessary admissions to acute hospitals, which are already overburdened. There have been significant increases in admissions to accident and emergency. In an intervention from the Conservative Benches on the hon. Member for Boston and Skegness, the point was made that, if we end up with transfers of care to acute settings, it is more inconvenient for the patient and costly for the health service, and thus wholly counter-productive. The hon. Member for Great Yarmouth (Mr. Wright) made the point that in the recent past in his area, his constituents had to wait hours for a doctor to turn up at their time of need. Just imagine the anxiety that those people go through while waiting for a doctor to arrive. I am sure we all agree that that is not acceptable. The best situation—I draw the distinction between the provision of care and the commissioning of care—is surely when, as far as possible, GPs who have an involvement in the local primary care system are involved in the provision of out-of-hours care. Some doctors could work shorter hours in in-hours time and commit to out-of-hours care. That happens in some places. We must recognise, however, that doctors are under significant pressure, and that one reason why the change was made in the first place is that we were finding it difficult to recruit doctors because of the commitment to 24-hour care. Any reform must recognise those pressures and understand that we cannot push doctors over the edge. Exhausted doctors are also not good for patient care.