VIDEO: Justin Tomlinson Praises Swindon CCG For Innovative Recruitment Campaign To Address GP Shortage

North Swindon MP Justin Tomlinson has praised the work of Swindon CCG for its innovative campaign to attract more GPs to the town.

Justin, the Conservative MP for North Swindon, took to the House of Commons to ask Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt what his department was doing to increase the number of doctors and nurses in the NHS.

The Health Secretary confirmed: “Last year this Government announced one of the biggest expansions of medical training places in the history of the NHS, involving funding 1,500 additional medical school places every year, of which 500 start this September, and reforms that will enable universities to offer up to 10,000 additional nurse training places every year.”

Justin highlighted the pilot funding Swindon Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) had received for a successful video campaign to recruit additional GPs to fill vacancies in the local community. He worked closely with the late Dr Peter Crouch to secure the funding for this video which has been shown to new trainee doctors across the country, highlighting that Swindon is an attractive place to settle and work in local practice.

He asked Mr Hunt: “Will the Secretary of State commit to exploring further innovative ways to match newly-qualified staff to vacancies that they might not have considered?”

Mr Hunt replied: “In parts of the country GP shortages have been successfully addressed, as the CCG has done in Swindon. An important part of this is persuading people who go into medicine that general practice is one of the most exciting and rapidly changing parts of medicine today. We have seen a 9% increase in the number of medical students choosing to go into general practice since 2015.”

Pressed by Shadow Health Secretary Jonathan Ashworth about NHS funding, Mr Hunt said: “Let me tell the honourable gentleman what extra money is going into the NHS – three years ago, £1.8 billion, which was not asked for by Labour; two years ago, £3.8 billion, which is nearly £1 billion more than Labour was promising; and this year, £1.3 billion. That is a lot of extra money. Why is it going in? Because, under this Government, we have created nearly 3 million jobs, and that strong economy is funding an improving NHS.”