SAVE OUR SURGERIES

Tories launch campaign and say SNP is ‘robbing’ GPs of £200m

THE SNP is robbing family doctors of vital funding worth nearly £200 million, according to research by the Scottish Tories.

This week, the Conservatives are to launch a hard-hitting Save Our Surgeries campaign, claiming GP services and patients are being damaged by Nationalist cuts.

They will warn that the shortage of GPs is reaching crisis point – and that patients are finding it harder than ever to get appointments.

New analysis has revealed that in Scotland, GPs receive only 7.3 per cent of all health spending, down from 9.8 per cent in 2005/06, while the NHS in England spends 9.05 per cent of its budget on family doctors.

The Tories now plan to write to every GP in Scotland, hold street campaigns where surgeries are under threat, and grill the SNP in a Holyrood debate.

They argue that if Scottish GPs received the same share of NHS cash as those in England, it would amount to an additional £188 million a year.

And the Tories say they will go further and commit 11 per cent of NHS funding to GPs by 2021, which would deliver around £400 million a year extra.

Scottish Conservative health spokesman Miles Briggs said: ‘These new figures reveal the true cost of the SNP’s neglect of Scotland’s family doctors.

‘The SNP is first in the queue to complain about the Westminster Government yet, if they had simply matched GP spending elsewhere in the country, nearly £200 million more would have been available to help your local family doctor in Scotland. That is the cost of SNP mismanagement.

‘The truth is that the SNP has starved GP practices of muchneeded resources, with the result that we now have a major crisis on our hands.’ The Royal Society for General Practice in Scotland (RSGPS) is running a ‘Put Patients First: Back General Practice’ campaign, calling for an 11 per cent share of NHS cash, and warns general practices are now creaking under the strain of years of underfunding.

The society expects the shortfall in family doctors to reach 856 by 2021. Its chairman, Dr Miles Mack, has previously accused the SNP of seeing family doctors as ‘dispensable’. Last night, he said: ‘Underfunding general practice is the root cause of so many of the issues the NHS now faces.

‘How can Accident and Emergency targets hope to be met when people feel they have to attend A&E, being unable to secure an appointment at their GP practice?

‘We see serving GPs leaving their profession and record numbers of practices handing back their contracts.’

Latest RSGPS figures show total health spending was £10.8 billion in 2015/16, of which £791 million went to GPs.

Last year, First Minister Nicola Sturgeon promised an additional £500 million a year by 2021 for ‘GPs and health centres’. But Health Secretary Shona Robison later watered down the commitment to funding of £250 million ‘in direct support of GPs’.

Dr Mack said: ‘The First Minister seemed to make a clear and unequivocal promise to patients and the health service at her 2016 conference. She did not say £250 million should be spent “in direct support” of general practice. “In direct support” is such a vague term it could even mean raising benefits or developing parkland for people’s exercise.’

Last night, a spokesman for Ms Robison said: ‘Funding for GPs will increase by £250 million by the end of this parliament as part of our overall commitment to increase primary care funding by £500 million.’

‘We now have a major crisis on our hands’