Labour today set out plans to improve GP access by abolishing GP practice boundaries. Meanwhile, Conservative proposals to let GPs cut their opening hours could see more than 450,000 GP appointments lost every year in the East of England.

In 2007 the Government saw through tough GP contract reforms to make a proportion of GP pay dependent on practices offering bookable appointments for their patients on evenings and weekends. The Conservatives opposed this contract, and say they will scrap it.

Before April 2008 and the contractual reforms, fewer than 12% of patients were offered appointment times outside 8-6 on Mondays to Fridays. Removing the incentives in the new contract would mean that GPs would be able to return to the shorter opening hours most of them offered before 2008. However, Conservative plans to let GPs cut their opening hours could see more than 450 000 GP appointments lost every year in the East of England.

Cambridge Labour Parliamentary Spokesperson Daniel Zeichner has blasted the move:

"David Cameron’s claims that the Tories are “the party of the NHS” and will not touch service provision have, once again, been exposed as the political airbrushing they are. Thanks to Labour’s reforms, 71% of practices in Cambridgeshire currently operate extended hours – this equates to over 4,000 extra hours per year, and 40,500 more appointments across the county. All this would be lost under a Tory Government where, thanks to their ideological fixation concerning cost cutting, George Osborne’s swinging axe would cut the very thing he pledges to uphold – frontline services."