My Lords, I support Amendments 297A and 297D. I will be brief, because we have already had a very lengthy and wide-ranging debate. The amendment in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Hodgson, is important, and she has set out the case for a named GP very well. As people become older, they tend to develop a more complicated and interrelated set of healthcare needs, and a GP who has that overview and can liaise with the family is extremely important.
I will add two quick points that have not come up in the debate so far. First, it might sound like a statement of the blindingly obvious, but for this very desirable amendment to happen, there need to be enough GPs in the system. Frankly, I am concerned that, despite commitments from the Government to increase the number of GPs by 6,000 by 2025, there is no current plan for how this will be achieved. The number of qualified full-time equivalent GPs is smaller today than it was in 2015.
Secondly, in relation to health inequalities, it is matter of real concern that GP practices serving more deprived populations receive less funding and often serve much larger numbers of patients than GPs in more affluent areas. I looked at the figures, which I will not repeat, and there are huge disparities in the size of the lists that they serve. I feel that passing an amendment of this sort on continuity of care would most likely benefit patients in the most deprived areas. With this debate, and if this amendment were accepted, I hope that there would be more pressure on the system to relieve that very unhelpful trend.
Amendment 297D is an extremely important amendment, and I am very grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, for raising it. I do not want to repeat what he said, save to say that I would see this review as a first step towards strengthening the rights of care home residents and their relatives to visit, to keep in touch and to spot the signs of abuse. We all understand how hard the pandemic has been. Most care homes have done their level best, despite a lack of access to PPE and testing in the early days. None the less, many of the visiting restrictions that have been imposed have far too often been blanket restrictions, rather than restrictions that took individual cases and individual needs into account.
We had the repeat Statement from the Minister last week on vaccinations, and we were told that there is now no limit on the number of visitors allowed in care homes. I can tell noble Lords that I have not been able to visit my mother inside her care home since before Christmas, because there have been continuous outbreaks of Covid. Often it affects only two people, but that is enough to shut the care home down. This is why there needs to be a more proportionate and individually judged approach to these things.
Finally, if we had a review of this sort and could strengthen rights, I would hope that we could also strengthen the human rights of care home residents, including self-funded residents who currently have no recourse to the Human Rights Act, which is fundamentally unfair.