GPS have worked through this crisis, often at personal cost to themselves EU student ID cards

sir – Your editorial (“People need their GPS”, September 2) implies that general practitioners are letting patients down by relying excessively on telephone or online consultations.

Doctors have worked tirelessly to serve their communities throughout the pandemic, often at personal cost, and would challenge this in the strongest possible terms. Practices have remained open during this crisis, but to protect both patients and our workforce, and following Government guidance, we have used telephone and video consultations to reduce the need to attend the surgery. However, when it has been clinically necessary to examine a patient or carry out a procedure, this has been done. GPS and their teams will always continue to provide this service.

During August alone, practices held more than a million face-to-face consultations with patients, and more than half of all appointments took place in person. People should be reassured, not intimidated, by the use of personal protective equipment, screens and social distancing, leading to quieter, safer waiting rooms.

We understand and share the frustrations that many people feel about the constraints imposed by this pandemic. The British Medical Association has received numerous reports of GPS and nurses being forced to work from home due to the lack of availability of Covid-19 tests for them or their families. Resolving this should be of the highest priority for the Government and NHS leadership.

Dr Richard Vautrey

Chair, General Practitioners Committee, British Medical Association London WC1

sir – There is an accepted mantra that GP surgeries are largely closed and that GPS are “hiding” or are scared of Covid-19. There has been a failure by the Health Secretary, the Royal College of General Practitioners and the British Medical Association to get the message out describing the reality.

GP surgeries had to turn procedures on their head in a matter of days this spring. The NHS required us all to convert to “total triage”, which has inevitably led to more remote care and fewer face-to-face consultations, except where clinically necessary.

Since the schools returned, demand for GP consultations has gone through the roof, so I am afraid the urgent and those most at risk are priority. Others are being asked to wait longer, to self-care or to find alternatives. My GPS are working harder than ever, doing face-to-face appointments, video consultations, making phone calls, and administering flu vaccines to our patients on the weekends. We are fully open, but it’s different because there is a pandemic.

Jon Atkinson

King Edward Road Surgery, Northampton

sir – You have published a lot of letters written by doctors in recent months.

Is this because they have more time on their hands?

Clive Hilton

Bradford-on-avon, Wiltshire sir – Every year nearly 200,000 young people come to study English in Britain. The vast majority are European, travelling with their schools and colleges using national ID cards.

Although these children pose no threat to national security, the Government plans to outlaw Id-card travel from EU and EEA nations for minors after the Brexit transition ends. Rather than force parents to purchase passports or exclude pupils without them, many European schools are likely to send students elsewhere.

This will devastate Britain’s language school sector, which brings in more than £1.4 billion annually and supports 35,000 jobs, when it needs to recover from the 80 per cent drop in students inflicted by Covid-19. It may not survive this double blow.

Today, we and others, including Conservative peers, are supporting an amendment, as part of the Immigration Bill in the House of Lords, to continue to allow travel to the UK for EU minors on ID cards. British teenagers who travel to EU nations on school-exchange trips will also benefit as exchanges are threatened if Id-card travel is banned.

We urge the Government to support this vital amendment.

Lord Alton of Liverpool (Crossbench) Baroness Bakewell (Lab) Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (Green)

Lord Blunkett (Lab) Baroness D’souza (Crossbench) Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab) Lord Kerr of Kinlochard (Crossbench) Baroness Massey of Darwen (Lab) Baroness Morris of Yardley (Lab) Baroness Pinnock (Lib Dem) Baroness Prashar (Crossbench) Lord Teverson (Lib Dem)