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Out-of-Hours Care

Can the hon. Gentleman not see that he is getting to the nub of why the previous system did not work? He will remember that before 2004 and the new GP contract, each GP was legally liable for the out-of-hours service, even if he or she did not provide it themselves. That meant that should a GP, in all good faith, take on a locum who happened to be a German or French national, that GP was responsible for checking whether that locum was registered and had the right qualifications, training and Criminal Records Bureau checks. For obvious reasons, GPs felt victimised when something went wrong, because the GP who had employed the locum was legally liable for that locum's actions. That is precisely why GPs were so frustrated and angry about the previous system and why they voted so overwhelmingly to divorce themselves from out-of-hours care and hand it to the primary care trust, which at least had the power and a reasonable level of bureaucracy to enable it to address some of those issues, which, in all honesty, could not be addressed by individual practitioners in individual practices.