You will recall that Jeremy Hunt was the Secretary of State for Health from 2012 until 2018, a period that marked some of the darkest years for general practice.  It was not until 2016 that the challenges general practice was facing were finally acknowledged, and the General Practice Forward View was published with the first cash injection into the service for over a decade.

But this was too late.  The great exodus of GPs from the service had begun (which had long been both predicted and ignored), and here we are over six years later with less GPs than the GPFV started with.  At no point in Jeremy Hunt’s tenure did general practice ever feel that its value was truly recognised.

So it was with a sense of real astonishment that I read the findings of the inquiry commissioned by Jeremy Hunt in his role as Chair of the Health and Social Care Select Committee.

When the inquiry into general practice was first announced it was hard not to be sceptical about why it had been called (you can read my thoughts from the time here).  One of the key questions was whether we could trust Jeremy Hunt, despite his motivation at the time to be a thorn in his own government’s side, which did seem to be working in general practice’s favour.

The report was published three days before Jeremy Hunt resigned to take on his role as Chancellor of the Exchequer, and it is without doubt one the most incisive and supportive government reports about general practice in recent times.

Don’t believe me? Here are some direct quotes from the report:

• “In response to this Report the Government and NHS England should be clear in acknowledging that there is a crisis in general practice and set out in more detail the steps they are taking in response to this crisis in the short term, to protect patient safety, strengthen continuity, improve access and reduce GP workloads.” (p12)
• “Continuity of care is beneficial for all patient interactions even if it cannot always be offered. It should not therefore be available only for patients with complex needs, because part of the purpose of a long-term relationship between a doctor and patient is to prevent chronic or long-term illness before it happens.” (p4)
• “The Government and NHS England must acknowledge the decline in continuity of care in recent years and make it an explicit national priority to reverse this decline” (p25)
• “Rather than hinting it may scrap the partnership model, the Government should strengthen it.” (p4)

The report contains a whole series of recommendations for government, nearly all of which are hard to argue with.  They include abolishing QOF and the IIF and reinvesting the finding in the core contract (p32), uplifting ARRS to include the costs of training and supervision (p15), limiting the list size per GP and committing to reducing this over time (p28), and allowing practices to operate as Limited Liability Partnerships to limit the amount of risk to which GP partners are exposed (p38).

There are more, and you can read the full list of recommendations on pp39-45 of the full report which you can find here.

What happens now?  Is general practice finally about to turn a corner?  Well, not quite.  The process is that the government has 2 months in which to respond to the recommendations made by the Health and Social Care Select Committee.  At that point we will find out which of the recommendations will turn into concrete action and which will disappear under the carpet, so let’s not get too excited just yet.

What will be fascinating to see will be the role that a certain Jeremy Hunt plays in the response to what is essentially his own report.  Of course by the time you read this he may no longer have a role in the cabinet, but assuming he does will he be prepared to put his money where his mouth is?  Has the leopard really changed its spots? Time will tell.

In the meantime I would fully recommend that you take the time to read the report (or at least the full list of recommendations in pp39-45 which reflect the report better than the summary document that goes with it).  If nothing else it feels like a recognition of where general practice is, the value that it adds and the need for action to be taken.