I regularly receive “campaign emails” in relation to a variety of topics.
These emails are typically automatically generated. As such, I receive many hundreds if not thousands.
It is therefore not practical for me to respond personally to each of these.
Instead, I publish the response on my website. This can be found below.
Please be assured this policy only applies to automatically generated communications.
If you send me personalised correspondence, on this or any subject, then I will of course respond individually, and address any points raised.
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Thank you for writing to me concerning the potential impact of the UK Labour Government’s employer national insurance changes on general practice in Wales.
I am extremely disappointed with the decisions made by the Labour UK Government in its new budget. Not only has the Labour Party introduced £40 billion worth of tax rises, they have allocated these funds poorly and failed to protect core aspects of care provision. It is the duty of the Labour Welsh Government to soften the harmful blows inflicted on Wales by the UK Labour Government’s policies, but they have failed in this duty.
The Chancellor’s decision to increase Employer’s National Insurance (ENI) by 1.2%, as well as to reduce the threshold at which employers pay towards ENI down to £5,000, will have a catastrophic impact on the standards of service provision for all impacted, including general practice. Current estimates predict costs for GP practices to cover the additional national insurance contributions across Wales to stand at approximately £7 million, with England to reach as high as £260 million. When we consider that Wales has already lost over a hundred GP practices since 2012 on Labour’s watch, we cannot overstate the significance of the additional pressures they are choosing to push onto our remaining practices.
I note that the Health Secretary, Wes Streeting MP, has acknowledged the concerns of GPs and has not ruled out the possibility of allocations being made for the year ahead that can remedy this. I sincerely hope that the Health Secretary makes the correct decision on this issue.
My Welsh Conservative colleagues and I will continue to highlight the damage done by this policy and will push the Welsh Government to make the case for the UK Government to use the extra monies from the Autumn Budget to support reducing NHS waiting list and to strengthen healthcare provision across Wales.
I thank you again for taking the time to contact me.
Kind regards,
Andrew
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Dear xx,
I am writing to you as a GP at xxxxx Surgery, in your constituency, to voice my concerns about the Government’s failure to protect GP practices from the increase in National Insurance contributions and lowering of thresholds announced in Wednesday’s Budget. This change will have a significant financial impact on general practices, including my own practice, and can only serve to directly undermine access and patient care. This comes at a time when practices are already under severe financial strain due to years of neglect.
GPs have worked in legal partnerships since the inception of the NHS in 1948 and we do not act like normal businesses. We have no shareholders, and we have no ability to increase our prices to absorb increased costs. We are fully committed to the NHS and are reliant on the funds the NHS gives us to provide patient care. Clearly in recent years these funds have been woefully inadequate.
Contrary to what Chief Secretary to the Treasury, Darren Jones MP, has stated, practices are designated as public authorities and are therefore not eligible for Employment Allowance. This means that practices like mine will take the full force of this rise in employment costs – a cost which we can simply not afford. All we are asking is you treat us like other parts of the NHS and reimburse these costs.
We are not offering enough appointments for our practice population but cannot afford to employ more doctors to solve this problem. In addition, as GP partners we are doing extra sessions in our own time to try and increase our profits to pay our rising costs. As such, we are effectively taking a pay cut (we are not paying ourselves for these extra sessions). If our costs continue to rise as they have done in recent years this will become unsustainable and we will not be able to provide good community patient care, which is, ultimately, why we all became GPs in the first place.
At a time when the Government has promised to repair and invest in the NHS this decision to place a further burden on practices must change, or we will see an adverse impact on patient care on offer in your constituency and more practices closing their doors for good.
As my MP, can you please raise this issue with the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care. I’d be more than willing to chat in more detail about how these NIC changes will impact my practice and your constituents.
I have also cc’d my MS’s into this email.
Kind regards,