North Wales Assembly Member Mark Isherwood has challenged the Welsh Government this week over the GP crisis facing North Wales and the fact that locums from the region are choosing to work in England.
Concerned that warnings of the GP shortage have been consistently ignored by the Labour Welsh Government, Mr Isherwood raised the matter in the Senedd yesterday during Questions to the First Minister.
He said:
“In 2014, the Chair of the North Wales Local Medical Committee wrote to Members calling for urgent action to tackle a growing crisis unfolding in General Practice. In 2016, the Vice-Chair of the North Wales Local Medical Committee wrote to Members saying that they were very aware of how precarious General Practice is in North Wales, with some areas, such as Wrexham, at risk of losing more surgeries in the very near future - and, of course, Gresford is now under threat.
“Last week, new Welsh Government figures showed the number of registered GPs working in Wales at its lowest level since 2013, with 83 fewer in 2016 and 2017, with just over half of the GP practitioners leaving the workforce rejoining as Locums.
“How, therefore, do you as a Government respond to the reasons for not working in Wales given to me by some locum GPs in North Wales two and a half weeks ago as being: more affordable medical defence cover for Locums doing sessions in England than in Wales, on top of the separate Performers List issue; extra bureaucracy when dealing with pension contributions; the curtailment of training links with North West medical schools; the 'stress and danger' of working in the Welsh system; and different and inferior IT systems, et cetera, et cetera?”
Standing in for the First Minister, Leader of the House, Julie James AM replied:
“It's true that using the same data source as previous years does give a fall of 83. However, statisticians have found quality issues with the data, which may mean it's considerably lower. And a more complete measure of GP capacity in Wales is to include all GP practitioners, locums, retainers and registrars. Using that method shows that there's a 0.3 per cent drop of about eight since 2016.
“However, I'm very pleased to say that, contrary to the gloomy impression, which I don't think is at all helpful, given by Mark Isherwood, following the conclusion of all three rounds of our 'Train. Work. Live.' recruitment into GP training posts, the Wales Deanery confirmed the appointment of 144 places, which surpasses the 136 training places available at the beginning of the recruitment round, which compares to 121 places filled following three rounds in 2016. This is an increase of 19 per cent.”
Mr Isherwood added: “This Labour Welsh Government have been ignoring warnings by our GPs for so long that perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised when they continue to do so.”