Dr Matt Lamb, Labour Prospective Parliament Candidate for Wyre Forest, has revealed that local patients would be guaranteed an appointment with a GP within 48 hours under the next Labour government.

As part of Labour’s plans to improve services for patients and ease pressure on local hospitals, Dr Lamb has backed Labour’s new guarantee for patients to be able to see a GP within 48 hours or on the same day if they need to be seen quickly.

GP surgeries across the country will be given an extra £100 million a year to achieve this massive improvement in standards – enough to pay for an additional three million GP appointments every year. It will also ease the pressure across the NHS and could save millions of pounds by reducing the number of patients going to A&E departments.

At the same time that Labour unveiled its new guarantee for patients, new figures showed that the proportion of patients getting a GP appointment in 48 hours has fallen from 80 per cent under the last Labour government to just 40 per cent under David Cameron.

Dr Matt Lamb, Labour Prospective Parliamentary Candidate for Wyre Forest said:

“Local patients are fed up of waiting for days before being seen by a local GP.

“Under the Tory-led Government a quarter of people now cannot get an appointment with a GP in the same week, adding to the pressure on A&E departments. This scandal can’t continue.

“That’s why I’m backing Labour’s plan to raise standards, put patients first and guarantee them an appointment with a local GP within 48 hours or on the same day if they need to be seen quickly.

“People in Wyre Forest are fed up of David Cameron’s broken promises to protect the NHS. It just goes to show that the Tories can’t be trusted with our National Health Service.”

Dr Matt Lamb Wyre Forest Labour Prospective Parliamentary Candidate