Differing views from MPs over GPs survey results

The Wolverhampton South East MP said he understood how patients were frustrated.

"The GP surgeries are doing the best they can, but there's no doubt that people find the difficulty of getting an appointment frustrating," he said.

"Some years ago, there was a target of getting an appointment within 48 hours, but now it's two weeks.

"That shows how far back we've gone and I really hope the Government and the NHS are able to work together to improve this.

"I think this is part of a wider picture of things not working properly in the country as our train services have become less reliable, you have the GP situation and you've got the scandal of sewage being pumped into the sea.

"There seems to be a number of services that are just not working as well as they used to."

Dudley South Conservative MP Mike Wood said he wasn't finding it hard personally to get a GP appointment, but accepted that some of his constituents had had problems.

He said: "We understand why services had to be provided differently during the pandemic, but now we're through the worst of Covid, it is obviously really important that people are able to get the face to face appointment they needs with their GPs.

"We need to see GPs back to providing a full range of community services and while I haven't personally had problems getting a GP appointment, I know it's different from surgery to surgery.

"For people like me, a telephone appointment probably works better than me having to go into the surgery, but I know it's a lot less suitable for elderly and more vulnerable patients.

"My constituents do tell me that whether they get an appointment quickly or not varies from surgery and some are doing well and others have a long way to go."