Orders of the Day — National Health Service (Primary Care) Bill [Lords]

Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at 8:19 pm on 11 February 1997.

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Photo of Edward Garnier Edward Garnier , Harborough 8:19, 11 February 1997

I was not in chambers. The hon. Gentleman has been known to make inaccurate remarks of that sort before. I shall not rise to it.

I want to take issue with the hon. Member for Cannock and Burntwood and some of his hon. Friends who have been here for a little longer than the hon. and voluble Member for Thurrock (Mr. Mackinlay) who sits for the provisional Labour party. The hon. Member for Cannock and Burntwood made some valuable points about the primary care aspects of the Bill. Primary care is not always provided by the general practitioner; it is provided by a range of health professionals who play a complementary role to that of the GP. Visiting our general practitioner is the main point of contact with the NHS for most of us. However, a constituency Member of Parliament has to take a wider view and no doubt Ministers at the Department of Health have a better view of the bigger picture.

My constituency is fortunate in its primary care teams. I trust that they will be strengthened and their flexibility—to use the word chosen by my hon. Friend the Member for Bury St. Edmunds—will be enhanced by some of the provisions in the Bill.

A range of medical professionals operate from Market Harborough, Kibworth, which is half way between Market Harborough and the city of Leicester, and the borough of Oadby and Wigston, which is the part of my constituency closest to the city of Leicester: health visitors; district nurses; occupational therapists; radiographers; and those engaged in the provision of continuing care, particularly for patients who have been in one of the three major hospitals in the city of Leicester and are not ready to go home, but need to convalesce or spend some time in a halfway house first.

All those people perform valuable and valued services in south-east Leicestershire. It is right, as the hon. Member for Cannock and Burntwood said, to think not only of general practitioners. Despite the fact that there is not, I think, a single fundholder, my constituency is fortunate in having excellent general practitioners who are dedicated to the national health service as an institution and to the care of their patients.