NHS at 60: making primary care fairer

As part of our mission to build a fairer Britain, in the 60th anniversary year of the NHS, Labour is publishing plans to widen access and increase choice in primary care.

The strategy underlines the central role primary and community care services play in keeping people healthy, preventing illness and promoting healthy life styles as well as tackling variations in health and well-being.

Launching the Primary and Community Care Strategy, Labour's Health Services Minister Ben Bradshaw said:

"People tell us that they want to be more involved in decisions about their health care and that primary and community care should be more individual, convenient and joined up. Change will only come from listening more closely to what patients tell us, responding to that and giving them more choice and say over their healthcare.

"Our vision for primary care will protect the highly popular and effective system of registering with a local GP, but give family doctors a stronger role in working with other clinicians, local authorities and other organisations to provide the right services, in the right place and at the right time to meet individual needs.”

We will help people have access to a wider and more joined-up range of services in their local communities, including diagnostic services, specialist clinics for conditions such as diabetes and asthma, community pharmacies offering treatment for minor ailments and community physiotherapy clinics. Primary care will also reach out to schools, workplaces and people's own homes. People should always feel that the system is connected and working for them - not just for their individual care needs but as a whole person.

Yet, while Labour is increasing access to primary care, by opening new practices and GP-led health centres and extending opening hours, the Tories would cut it. They would scrap the deal with doctors to provide extended opening at evenings and weekends, and oppose our plan for 152 new GP-led health centres across the country, open 8am-8pm, seven days a week. David Cameron even wrote in the Times today that "Google can tell us more about our illness than our doctors." (The Times, 3 July 2008)