"This doesn’t mean it’s ‘job done’. Loads to do. But the NHS is going in the right direction.”
The Labour government says over 1,500 GPs have been recruited over the last six months as it seeks to end the 8am scramble for an appointment.
After more than decade of Tory neglect, the Labour government is investing in the NHS, with the Department of Health and Social Care stating that since October 1 some 1,503 GPs have been recruited.
Health Secretary Wes Streeting posted on X: “Within weeks of taking office, we said we’d employ 1,000 more GPs onto the frontline by the end of March. Today we can report that we’ve employed 1,503 more GPs!
“This doesn’t mean it’s ‘job done’. Loads to do. But the NHS is going in the right direction.”
It is hoped that the boost in GP numbers will serve to ease pressure on doctors, cut patient waiting lists and end the 8am scramble for a GP appointment, the Government said.
Streeting told Sky News earlier today: “We said we would deliver a thousand more GPs by the end of March, we’ve actually delivered 1,500… I wouldn’t for a moment say to people watching job done, you’re going to find it miraculously easy to get a GP appointment now, bit this is undoubtedly a step in the right direction, to reverse the decline we saw under our predecessors to start fixing the front door to the NHS in general practice.”
He added: “I hope against the sort of cynicism that people feel about politics, politicians and government that people take some quiet confidence and hope that we are delivering what we said, that we are getting the NHS on the road to recovery and that over the course of this Parliament we will deliver the change that people voted for at the last election.”
The Labour government has also cut waiting lists by 193,000 since July, and delivered over two million extra NHS appointments in England in its first year.
Basit Mahmood is editor of Left Foot Forward
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