Scottish Labour pledges to deliver GP appointments within 48 hours

Party's leader in Scotland Kezia Dugdale promises to invest £500m in primary care if Labour is elected to Holyrood

Leader Kezia Dugdale has promised to invest £500m in primary care (PA)

Everyone in Scotland will be able to get an appointment at their local GP surgery within 48 hours under Labour proposals to channel more money into front line care, the party’s leader will pledge on Saturday.

Kezia Dugdale will promise to invest £500 million in primary care by the end of the next Scottish Parliament if her party is elected to Holyrood in May, in an attempt to relieve the pressure on the country’s GPs and prevent patients making unnecessary trips to A&E.

In a speech to the Scottish Labour spring conference in Glasgow, she will claim that general practice in Scotland is facing its worst crisis in a generation under the SNP, with a quarter of practices struggling to fill vacancies and more than £1bn cut from their budgets.

The £500m of extra funding would be taken out of an estimated £1.6bn set to be given to the Scottish Parliament by the Treasury for use on health over the next five years, Labour said. Some of the money would be channelled into expanding the role of pharmacies, which would be given more power over prescribing and the ability to treat minor ailments.

Labour said its target was to ensure that every patient could be seen within 48 hours by the end of the next parliament – although appointments could be with nurses or pharmacists and not necessarily with a GP. Under the plans, practices will also be helped to provide patients with the option of booking appointments online.

“Our Labour Party that established the NHS in the 1940s will be there to ensure that our health service is fit for the challenges of the 2040s,” Ms Dugdale will say. “Instead of the cuts to GPs we’ve seen in the last decade, our plan for the NHS will guarantee an appointment at your local surgery that you can book online within 48 hours.”

Scottish Labour will meet for the last time before May’s election with a mountain to climb. Current opinion polls suggest that the SNP is on course to secure a historic third term at Holyrood, with Ms Dugdale’s party likely to be battling it out for second place with the Scottish Conservatives.

UK Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn will not be attending the meeting in Glasgow, but Ms Dugdale has brushed off suggestions of a snub by insisting the Scottish arm of the party is “autonomous”. In her speech, she will appeal to the party’s left wing by describing herself as a “socialist”.