Speeches by Kinnock.

“My hon. Friend is a doughty campaigner for his constituents. I am not familiar with the details of the case that he mentions, but I would be happy to look into it; if he would write to me, we can take that further.”

“The key point here is that GPs are the clinicians whom we trust to define what urgent means. There are, of course, a number of criteria and conditions that will ring an extra alarm bell and ensure that the patient is registered as urgent. It is worth mentioning that 46% of all GP appointments already take place on the …”

“The guidance on neighbourhood health will be published very soon indeed; it is almost complete, and is coming soon. We recognise that general practice will be right at the heart of neighbourhood health, so we have to ensure a single neighbourhood provider contract and a multi-neighbourhood provider contract that are al…”

“My hon. Friend makes such an important point about paying tribute to the incredible work that our GPs and their teams do right across the length and breadth of our country, including in Gedling; he is an excellent champion for his constituency. This is about marrying investment with reform. In addition to the £1.1 bill…”

“The very significant uplift we have made to the contract—the £1.1 billion last year and the £485 million additional investment we are making this year—will go some way to address the hon. Gentleman’s question, but there is, of course, always more we can do. We have to deal with very many competing priorities across the…”

“Please do pass on my thanks to the Laurie Pike and al-Shafa practices for the outstanding work they do. We are not really doing ringfencing; we are embedding prevention in the contract through the quality outcomes framework. Those incentives are the best way to give practices the flexibility they need while ensuring th…”

“I thank the hon. Member for his kind words about the Government’s work. I do have an excellent relationship with the Minister in Northern Ireland. Devolution is vital to the Government, and we are certainly not in the business of trying to micromanage what is happening both across the regions of England and in the devo…”

“I thank my hon. Friend for that question and ask him to please pass on my best wishes to his father and thank him for the outstanding service he provided over many years. The Carr-Hill formula review is an important piece of work. It will have a complex range of drivers in it, based on remoteness and coastal areas, but…”

“The hon. Member raises an important point. It is important that we at the Department of Health and Social Care work closely with the NHS regions and the ICBs to keep a close eye on that issue. It is vital that GPs are aligned with the highest professional standards. If we see those standards not being observed in any c…”

“Very much along the lines of what I said to the hon. Member for Gosport (Dame Caroline Dinenage), we need to ensure that the social infrastructure is there in such areas of population growth. I would be more than happy to meet my hon. Friend to discuss that further.”

“I thank the hon. Gentleman for that question. It would be deeply troubling if such an important service to the community were to be removed, so I would certainly be happy to speak to him. Perhaps he would like to write to me to provide more details. Looking to the medium to longer term, the review of the Carr-Hill form…”

“On prevention, there are some really important measures in the contract: in essence, we are recalibrating the quality outcomes framework, which is the basis for payments to incentivise the actions that GPs take. By changing the QOF, as it is called, we can shift that in one direction or the other, and we have changed i…”

“My hon. Friend is right that it is vital that ICBs have a clear understanding of their population health needs and their demographics. It is important that the ICB is ahead of that curve and taking decisions well in advance of a practice closing down so that a commensurate service is provided; that is a really importan…”

“I am not familiar with the details of that specific case, but if the hon. Member writes to me, I will be more than happy to furnish her with a response. There is a real concern in some parts of the country, particularly where there have been new developments or populations moving into the area, that the GP practice doe…”

“My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The £292 million we have made available for advice and guidance is repurposed funding from the capacity and access improvement payments, so it is part of incentivising improved access and better patient outcomes. I can absolutely assure him that Jess’s rule remains fixed as a really …”

“I thank the right hon. Gentleman, but that is precisely what we have been doing. We said in our manifesto that we would bring back the family doctor. We said we would hire 1,000 more GPs to the frontline and we have delivered 2,000. When we came into office in July 2024 there was a bizarre situation where demand for ac…”

“A number of things have happened which will help with access to GPs. One is the very significant increase in the number of GPs we have put on the frontline and another is online access. We are now dealing with the 8 am scramble by ensuring we do not have a choke point on the telephone lines because more and more people…”

“My hon. Friend is right: avoiding preventable admissions is right at the heart of what we are trying to achieve. Of course, we have challenges with delayed discharge—something like 14% of patients in hospital beds are medically fit for discharge—and if we look at the flow of patients through hospital, we see that we ca…”

“The right hon. Gentleman makes a very important point about bureaucracy. Many of the reforms that we are pushing for in the contract are designed to reduce bureaucracy. For example, by moving to a single point of access and embedding advice and guidance in the contract, we will reduce the number of transactions. In the…”

“I am not able to pre-empt the Carr-Hill review, but we have had a system based on data that is often 25 years old. Of course, we know that the Conservatives have the Tunbridge Wells philosophy. We will always recall the former Prime Minister standing in front of Conservative party members and proudly proclaiming the fa…”