General Practitioners

Health written question – answered at on 10 April 2014.

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Photo of Luciana Berger Luciana Berger Shadow Minister (Public Health)

To ask the Secretary of State for Health what estimate his Department has made of the number of GP practices which have a premium or 0845 telephone number to book appointments.

Photo of Daniel Poulter Daniel Poulter The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health

The requested information is not collected centrally.

Regulations introduced in 2010 prevented general practitioner practices from entering into, renewing or extending a contract for telephone services unless it was satisfied that, looking at the arrangements as a whole, patients would not pay more to make calls to the practice than they would to make calls to a geographical number.

It is for NHS England to ensure that practices are meeting the terms of their contracting arrangements.

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David Hickson - fair telecoms campaign
Posted on 13 Apr 2014 3:51 pm (Report this annotation)

On 1 February 2014, the fair telecoms campaign published a list of the 440 surgeries in England shown as using illegal numbers by NHS Choices - see http://tiny.cc/GPs300114. As we have now passed the fourth anniversary of the relevant changes to the legally-enforceable contract terms this list will shortly be updated.

The terms of the GP contract are clear and were confirmed in a letter from NHS England issued on 4 November 2013 - see http://tiny.cc/NHSE_Letter.

In particular, this confirms that the "two tier" arrangement operated by many practices not only represents a breach of the terms of the contract, it is also the most fundamental breach of the principles of the NHS. It also confirms that the telephone system providers allow surgeries to switch to geographic rate numbers at any time within the terms of their arrangement.

There is therefore no reason whatsoever why there should be any practice that continues in breach of its contract after so long a period. Furthermore, there is no reason why NHS England should allow this to happen. It is also most unsatisfactory that the Minister responsible, and accountable to the parliament which determines the terms of the contract, is not aware of the current situation regarding compliance.