10-year plan will make new GPs 'enthusiastic' again, says Wes Streeting

NHS 10-year plan reforms will generate ‘enthusiasm’ about working in general practice from future generations of doctors, the health secretary has told MPs today.

Wes Streeting’s comments came as he was questioned on the Government’s 10-year plan for the NHS by MPs on the House of Commons health and social care committee.

Labour MP for Calder Valley Josh Fenton-Glynn asked Mr Streeting how the Government is going to make sure doctors go into specialties ‘that we need for the future’, adding that GP training is ‘a particularly difficult one’ to attract new doctors to.

It comes after the 10-year plan pledged to create over the next three years 1,000 new specialty training posts ‘with a focus on specialties where there is greatest need’.

Mr Streeting responded that ‘part of the challenge with general practice’ is that it has ‘not had the best rep with medical students’.

He told MPs: ‘If you’re reading all the time in the newspapers that GPs are overworked and burned out, and constantly seeing GPs given a kicking because people can’t get an appointment, you’re not going to think “you know what? That’s where I want to go to work”.

‘Actually, the pitch I want to make to the doctors and nurses of the future is that community neighbourhood health is where some of the most exciting medicine will be practiced.

‘It’s where you can make the most difference to patients in tackling health inequalities. And I think that will really speak to the values of the generation that’s coming through and what they want to achieve. So I hope that we’ll see a good deal of enthusiasm for working in general practice.’

Mr Streeting also reiterated the Government’s commitment to reviewing the Carr-Hill formula for GP funding, which was announced as part of the 10-year plan, so that ‘working-class areas’ receive their ‘fair share of resources’.

‘I think it’s a disgrace, frankly, that if you are living in the poorest community in the country, there’ll be about 300 more patients per head than the most affluent,’ he added.

He told the committee that the Government is ‘going to consult on Car-Hill’, although he did not specify who the consultation would include. Pulse has asked the Department of Health and Social Care to clarify this.

MPs also asked him whether the review is going to take ‘racial issues’ into account, rather than only geographically-deprived areas.

Mr Streeting said: ‘I think it’s a reasonable thing for people to ask us to look at, and we’ll take that into consideration. What we’re driving at is to make sure that the level of resource going into general practice is able to meet the needs of the local population.

‘And so you’ve got to take into account a whole range of demographic pressures and societal conditions.’

He was also pressed on the difference between reforms announced as part of the 10-year plan and reforms of the NHS which had already been tried by previous governments.

Conservative MP for Isle of Wight East Joe Robertson asked him: ‘What’s the difference between community diagnostic centres, multidisciplinary GP surgeries, Darzi centres and now your word for it, neighbourhood hubs? I mean, these are things that have run from 2000, 2008, 2012, and now your plan, they sound like the same thing just with different names.’

Mr Streeting said: ‘What neighbourhood health centres will do is bring under one roof a whole range of different services to give patients a one-stop shop with a principle that anything that that can be done outside of a hospital setting in communities, in neighbourhoods, should be.

‘What we want to see happening in neighbourhoods is the opportunity to go in and get much faster access to consultations and diagnostics, to be able to have things like your blood tests, scans, all under one roof.

‘All of that can be done in primary care. And the reason we know that to be true is because in pockets of exceptional practice in this country, it’s already happening. And one of the core themes of the plan is to take the best of the NHS, to the rest of the NHS.’

The BMA has recently raised concerns about plans to transfer some ICB functions to neighbourhood teams, saying that these pose an ‘existential threat’ to GPs as independent contractors.

Read all of Pulse’s coverage of the 10-year plan here.