The one thing I’ve always thought remarkable about Labour politicians is their disconnect with GPs on the NHS.
Former primary care minister Ben Bradshaw used to bend my ear regularly about how Labour’s NHS policy was backed by the majority of voters. (He was also desperately keen for the Conservative health team to remain unchanged to preserve this position.)
The abolition of practice boundaries is one of those policy ideas that is so ‘crazy’, as the chairman of the RCGP put it, that it’s difficult to believe that government ministers actually had the nerve to suggest it.
DoH policy to
abolish practice boundaries received only a brief mention towards the end of
England health minister’s Mike O’Brien’s speech on Thursday.
Perhaps he should
have realised that it was an idea not generating much love from the 1,300 GPs,
nurses and practice managers at Glasgow’s SECC when it was greeted with a quiet,
but audible, ‘boo’.
I’m going to begin by coming clean: I have been registered with the same GP practice since I was seven years old. It is in Sussex; I am in London, where I have lived for more than ten years. There’s little excuse for not having moved to a local practice, I’ve just never quite got round to it.
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