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Professor John Robertson OBA
BBC Reporting Scotland this morning has a short report starting with:
GPs say patients are suffering because of ongoing funding problems
This is not even based on one of the BMA’s typically flawed and unreliable surveys of their members. I’t’s ‘The BMA Doctors union’ saying it, so that’ll be just Iain Kennedy again.
Is there anything Dr Kennedy never tells you?
Just this:
FTE GPs per 100,000 population:
- England: ~44.3 (June 2025, based on FTE)
- Wales: ~51 (September 2024, based on FTE
- Scotland: ~95 (2022, likely headcount; more recent FTE data unavailable)
Sources:
https://www.gov.wales/general-practice-workforce-30-september-2024-html
Are patients in Scotland suffering more than in England & Wales because they cannot access a GP?
No
Between 400 000 and 600 000 more patients in Scotland find it ‘easy’ or ‘very easy’ to access a GP than they would if they lived in England or Wales
How I calculate that?
The Guardian in February 2025 had:
Most NHS users in England affected by dysfunctional admin, report finds. About 64% of people had difficulties with health service last year relating to communication about care.1
The Scottish media have nothing on this and I can find nothing directly comparable. However, from the ONS on 30 May, 2024: The impact of winter pressures on different population groups in Great Britain: GP practice access has comparative figures on this key aspect of satisfaction with NHS admin – ease of access to a GP.2
Asked How easy or difficult was it to make contact with the GP practice (?), 50% of the 4 290 Scots sampled said it was ‘Easy’ or ‘Very easy’ compared to only 43% in England and 39% in Wales.
On just ‘Very easy’, the figures were 21% in Scotland compared with only 17% in England and 16% in Wales.
On ‘Difficult and ‘Very difficult’, the figures were 29% in Scotland but 34% in England and 36% in Wales.
Remember, these single digit percentage differences imply huge actual differences:
7% more in Scotland [of 5.44m] than in England find it easy or very easy to contact a GP, means 380 000 people!
11% more in Scotland [of 5.44m] than in Wales find it easy or very easy to contact a GP, means 598 000 people!
Sources:
Talking-up Scotland 'Albatraz' 
BBC Scotland has as much credibility these days as the IDF or the Trump White House when it comes to news stories and passing on Truth to the Public .
Sadly, while the IDF and Trump can be condemned for their lack of verisimilitude and contempt for the Truth , at least we are not obliged to fund them , unlike the BBC . So , don’t pay their ridiculous and undemocratic propaganda Tax !
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Most people are too scared not to pay the (English controlled) BBC operating in Scotland, basically a tv tax in Scotland..they believe they’ll be locked up, (you can’t be locked up for debt in Scotland re Scots Law) and the EngGov makes it complicated to opt out now…then they harass people every so often.
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It is not Kennedy fronting it this time but you can be certain he’s lurking, he does seem to enjoy a good lurk – The source piece is ” ‘If I die, it’s your fault’ – the patients angry at GP delays ” from HMS James Cook https://archive.ph/YNWpS
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“If I die, it’s your fault”………..
So that then must be the exact same elsewhere in the UK …….where areas within NHS England & NHS Wales are failing (indeed Labour Wales is worse than Scotland)…..my husband’s friend lives in London and he had to wait one month for a telephone appointment with his GP……
The BBC will never stop their relentless campaign against the SNP in the run up to all elections…..however they, the BBC in Scotland, fail to really make their point, as in with them wilfully neglecting to do a compare and contrast with other NHS services in the UK…..then it seems obvious that Scotland cannot be the worse….or the BBC in Scotland would be communicating that fact.
Then there is this disaster called BREXIT…..the impact on the NHS and the Care service has been catastrophic….but apparently that is not to be referred to as most of the UK media omit it as a pertinent & crucial point….mainly because the Tories, Labour & Reform UK all support it , Brexit, as a UK policy….. that Scotland (because it is still a part of the UK) must then also tolerate as an intolerable situation…..as the media defends the indefensible in their refusal to communicate the truth (negative’s) connected to Brexit ( within the NHS , Pharmacy service, Medicines and medical research)………. etc etc
More chance of us all dying sooner with the UK because we are still a part of the UK State…..whose propaganda is pumped out by the UK State media…….
Liz S
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“The BBC will never stop their relentless campaign against the SNP in the run up to all elections…..” is precisely the point.
Yet so is the shite churned out by various ‘companies’ to support their ‘relentless campaign’ – As ever it’s about linkage to SG government constraints on practice profits – You can go all the way back to the birth of the NHS almost 80 years ago before SG was even a thing, to find pretty much the same stupid arguments from Tories – But with thousands of surviving battle hardened soldiers returned from war to their promised ‘land fit for heroes’ to find they had to rebuild it themselves, the Tories pretty much melted into the walls.
James Cook is no friend of Scots and never was under his predecessor the DisHon Sarah Smith – When the last two helicopters leave Pacifier Quay carrying James’ bespoke suit collection, it might be possible for a non-propagandist to rise from the ashes of burnt suits and bullshit, but I suspect we’re going to have to demolish and start afresh…
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I’m afraid mentioning “easy” or “very easy” in the context of GP appointments boils my piss!
My practice, and most of the other local practices, think that asking people to sit on the phone at 08.30 for up to 45 minutes is an acceptable way to manage an appointment system.
Invariably you are then told that a doctor will call you during a two hour slot. This means standing by the phone again until they do. If you feel you need to see a doctor you then have to convince them that this is justified. Anytime I have been granted an appointment the surgery is empty – perhaps just one or two people waiting.
I believe that some GPs are using this system to give themselves an easy life. The pandemic exacerbated this and it’s really not good enough. In a commercial situation any business that tried to operate like this would not last ten minutes!
They are also passing more and more consulting duties onto their nurse practitioners. I am old enough to remember a time when all you had to do was pitch up at the surgery and join a queue if you needed to see a doctor. If you were unable to do so they would come to you and there were no nurse practitioners back then.
I am as aware of the BBC’s propaganda wing in Scotland as anyone, but the real problems that people have to face in getting GP appointments cannot be denied.
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It’s a problem of generalisations – There is no “average” in the real world experience, but the ” sit on the phone at 08.30 for up to 45 minutes ” was never an acceptable way to manage an appointment system or anything else since the birth of the NHS when all they had was a phonebox – It’s the “modern efficient” if robotic method sold to various organisations as the future of handling ‘customers’ and minimising staff, complete with increasingly irritating muzak and a bladder close to bursting as I found out trying to contact HMRC from ‘overseas’ – When did you ever hear of such a leap in digital technology as “Your number has been registered and you will get a call back as soon as someone is free” ? – It’s never been rocket science, it’s a racket…
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