Unlike many of us up and down the country who struggle to get same day appointments, mega rich Sunak, the richest MP in Parliament, is registered with a West London clinic that charges £250 for ‘a half-hour consultation
Rishi Sunak has once more been slammed as ‘out-of-touch’ after it was revealed that the prime minister who has spoken about his commitment to the NHS is registered with a private GP practice, ‘promising same-day appointments for £250’.
Unlike many of us up and down the country who struggle to get same day appointments, mega rich Sunak, the richest MP in Parliament, is registered with a West London clinic that charges £250 for ‘a half-hour consultation and, unlike most NHS GPs across the country, offers appointments in the evenings and at weekends, as well as consultations by email or phone that cost up to £150’, the Guardian reports.
Home visits by doctors sell for between £400 and £500 pounds.
Just 41.5% of GP appointments in September took place on the same day, with a further 8% taking place the following day. Meanwhile, the number of people in England waiting to start routine hospital treatment has risen to a record high. A total of 7.1 million people were waiting to start treatment at the end of September, NHS England said.
It comes as Sunak refused to answer questions at the G20 summit in Bali last week about whether he had private healthcare, saying only that it was “not appropriate” to talk “about one’s family’s healthcare.
Labour MP Ben Bradshaw tweeted in response to the news: “I know Sunak lives in a different financial stratosphere from the rest of us, but having a private GP, when the Tories have so run the #NHS into the ground that most people can’t get to see an NHS GP is politically unsustainable. That the Tories don’t get this says it all.”
If a politician, by virtue of their wealth and privilege, refuses to use the same state healthcare facilities as the majority of the population and chooses to go private, if they think the state schools the majority of us attend aren’t good enough for their children, then it’s perfectly legitimate to ask whether they truly understand the struggles faced by ordinary people.
Basit Mahmood is editor of Left Foot Forward
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