HC Deb 14 March 1995 vol 256 cc675-6
2. Mr. MacShane

To ask the Secretary of State for Health what restrictions apply to GP fundholders in respect of using public money to improve their property portfolio.

The Minister for Health (Mr. Gerald Malone)

General practitioner fundholders may, with the agreement of their regional health authority, use audited savings for the benefit of their patients. This includes improving their surgeries to provide a wide range of services.

Mr. MacShane

Is there not growing concern among medical practitioners that some—not all—fundholders are not treating a required number of patients in order to improve the value of their property so that at the end of their practice they can sell it and make a large personal profit? If a doctor approaching retirement has a choice between 10 hip operations or adding £100,000 to the value of his property, that is a choice introduced by the Government to allow fundholding doctors to turn themselves into small businesses and put profit before patients.

Mr. Malone

I hope that every general practitioner fundholder across the land will have heard what the hon. Gentleman has said, which is a slur on most of them, on those whom he was mentioning, and noted his tendentious use of the words "property portfolio" in his question when what he should have said was surgery premises. It is not unusual for public funds to be made available for the improvement of premises. That was always the case when grants were made available before to improve the capital asset with precisely the same effect as if GP fundholders use their savings now. I just wish that the hon. Gentleman would bear in mind the additional services that are being provided for patients—the improvements, the physiotherapy and the capital equipment that is brought into the premises. Fundholding is a great success and it does doctors no good when the hon. Gentleman denigrates them in that way.

Mr. Patrick Thompson

Bearing in mind the fact that more and more GP practices are opting for fundholding with clear benefits to patients throughout the country, is my hon. Friend aware that the Opposition are now in as much of a muddle about the future of health care as they are on education? Will he give some help to the right hon. Member for Derby, South (Mrs. Beckett) to sort that out?

Mr. Malone

Not only am I keen to help the right hon. Lady; I have already done so. I wrote to her yesterday asking whether she might now be prepared to clarify her party's position on this important point. Perhaps she will have an opportunity to say whether she agrees with the Leader of the Opposition, and reveal that yet another layer of veneer is to be added to left-wing policies.