§ Mr. McTaggartasked the Secretary of State for Scotland if he will list in the Official Report such information as is available to him on the discrepancies between general practitioners' patient lists and the population figures; and if he will make a statement.
§ Mr. John MacKayInformation on general practitioners' patient list sizes in relation to population figures is as follows.
The list size figures, which are provisional and are as at 1 October 1986, are taken from information provided by health boards to the Common Services Agency of the National Health Service. The population figures are taken from provisional estimates by the General Register Office (Scotland) and are as at 30 June 1986.
Discrepancies between list sizes and population figures arise from a number of factors including the time taken to record the transfer of a patient who moves from one health board area to another and that involved in notifying the death of a patient and the subsequent removal of that patient's name from the appropriate list.
Health board List size Population Argyll and Clyde 459,805 445,328 Ayrshire and Arran 397,967 374,814 Borders 104,914 101,804 Dumfries and Galloway 151,814 146,770 Fife 351,838 343,825 Forth Valley 290,903 271,819 Grampian 510,301 502,850 Greater Glasgow 1,068,906 959,839 Highland 204,308 200,764 Lanarkshire 589,407 564,604 Lothian 802,820 741,910 Orkney 19,369 19,266 Shetland 22,559 23,580 Tayside 417,467 392,346 Western Isles 31,424 31,494 Scotland 5,423,532 5,121,013