Journalists call it a ‘marmalade dropper’, a story so stunning it would make gape-mouthed readers ditch their morning toast.
Lincoln Jopp, MP for Spelthorne (Image: House of Commons)
“The queue that shames Britain: 7.11am and desperate patients wait in the cold and dark outside surgery – just so they can be seen by their GP,’ roared the headline.
Could there be a more damning indictment of the Tories’ systematic neglect of the NHS over the last 14 years?
Sunbury Health Centre GP Practice and its pre-dawn queue was the perfect example of Keir Starmer’s indictment that the Conservatives, my party, had “broken the NHS”.
But then I checked the date of the article. It was 22 December 2014.
I was elected to represent Spelthorne in July’s General Election. A first-time MP, I promised voters I’d live in the constituency.
Ten days after the election, my wife Caroline and I moved to Sunbury – with that Sunbury Health Centre as our local GP.
So I registered. I did it online and it took about five minutes. As promised, within ten days I had been loaded onto their systems and all my digital medical history had been transferred.
They invited me via their app to come in for a registration medical, offering a number of slots over a week.
I booked for 8am, opening time. After 25 years in the Army and the mantra ‘two minutes early is three minutes late’, of course I was there sharp and chatting to fellow patients before the doors unlocked.
I experienced a very new customer experience called the “patient kiosk”.
I followed signs to a room, where I found a couple of bits of equipment and a touch screen.
It felt like the beginnings of an escape room, a
favourite family pastime over the years.
I followed all the instructions, answered loads of questions and the machines took my blood pressure and measured my height and weight.
Ten minutes and I was done – and hadn’t seen a soul.
But I did need to talk to someone about a repeat prescription.
A queue of one at the reception counter before a friendly and helpful chap told me I’d have to see an actual doctor before they could issue the pills.
I should go online and request an appointment and he would process it.
There was a good mobile signal so I did it there and then and started to walk home. Before I had got to the house, my phone rang and a real-life human offered me a series of appointment choices later that day.
I went to the appointment, saw the doctor and my repeat prescription was sent to the pharmacy round the corner ready for collection before close of business.
In short, the whole thing was the best GP experience I have ever had. And this from the GP practice which ten years earlier “shames Britain”.
Don’t get me wrong. Much of the NHS needs to change, and change radically. I wish Labour Health Secretary Wes Streeting nothing but success in his mission.
But in that same spirit, before Keir Starmer gaslights the country about the NHS being broken, we do have to deal in facts.
Some of it works, and works pretty well.
And in the case of my GP’s surgery, it has already been transformed in the last ten years.
Reader, always take your pills with a glass of water – and everything Keir Starmer says with a big pinch of salt.
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Labour has let slip what we knew all along on winter fuel payments – Mel Stride
The Government aren’t processing one in five pension credit claims within 50 working days, and that’s before the expected surge in applications for this winter.
Shadow work and pensions secretary Mel Stride (Image: Getty)
That means some pensioners will suffer the uncertainty of waiting 10 weeks to find out whether they qualify for the vital payments cut in a hurry by Labour.
Labour has let slip what we knew all along: pensioners eligible for pension credit will fall through the cracks this winter.
This heartless policy has been rushed through with no warning, not giving vulnerable pensioners time to prepare for a perilous winter.
Retirees in need of support will have to make the impossible choice between heating and eating.
On this basis, Labour Party research which suggested 4,000 pensioners would die as a result of this policy may be an underestimate.
Besides the obvious cruelty of this policy, for which Labour still haven’t produced an impact assessment, it will create extra pressures on our NHS, social care and other essential public services.
The basic unfairness of Labour ripping winter fuel payment from pensioners on roughly £11,500 whilst handing billions to his union paymasters could not be clearer.
When Labour was courting the votes of retirees in the General Election, there were allegedly ‘no plans’ to change benefits for pensioners. But like many promises they made this is one that has been broken extraordinarily quickly.
Express readers know that supporting vulnerable pensioners who have worked hard all their lives is the right thing to do.
Sadly, Labour have quickly turned back on 14 years of improving living standards for pensioners made under the Conservatives. Something that should never be forgotten.
