NHS Next Stage Review

Part of Oral Answers to Questions — Children, Schools and Families – in the House of Commons at 3:31 pm on 30 June 2008.

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Photo of Alan Johnson Alan Johnson The Secretary of State for Health 3:31, 30 June 2008

Norman Lamb mentioned the 1948 leaflet that went through every door and that said that health centres would come eventually. They never did, either through lack of funding or professional opposition. What would really help would be to get away from the deliberate misconception about these centres. The first argument is that they will all have 25 GPs. They will not—they will have about five. The second argument is that people will have to leave their own GP to go there. Wrong—people can go to one of the GP-led health centres and still remain registered with their GP. The third argument is that they will all be run by private companies. Obviously, there is a tendering process and we want to see quality, particularly in under-doctored areas, where we are increasing the number of GPs to provide a proper service. However, we expect the vast majority to be run by GP consortiums. Once people see that all these dreadful distortions—in part, exaggerated by the Conservative party—are just not true and that we are increasing capacity, they will see that this is a frankly long overdue increase in capacity in primary care.