Almost one in 10 patients waiting a month for a GP appointment in parts of Yorkshire as waits on course to hit record

Speaking from the party’s conference in Brighton, Sir Ed said the new government’s first Budget on October 30 should have the NHS as its “top priority.”

The party is calling for Rachel Reeves to give emergency funding for the NHS, including for GP services, so people can get an appointment when they need one.

NHS data, compiled by the Liberal Democrats, shows that in the seven months to July, there have already been 10.3 million waits of four weeks or more for a GP appointment.

That is significantly higher than the equivalent period last year, when there were 8.6 million.

It means this year is on track to beat last year’s record of 17.6 million four-week waits for a GP appointment.

The party said that over the course of the entire last Parliament a “staggering” 71 million GP appointments had waits of a month or longer.

The situation is particularly bad in Yorkshire, with five of the region’s integrated care boards making it into the top 20 areas in England with the highest proportion of four-week waits.

In Sheffield, in the seven months to July, nine per cent of GP appointments took a month or more, which is only slightly below the worst local authority in Gloucestershire, which sits at 10 per cent.

In the East Riding of Yorkshire, eight per cent of family doctor appointments had waits of more than four weeks, while in Wakefield, Barnsley and North Yorkshire people seven per cent of people were waiting for a month or more.

The national average is five per cent, while across much of London the proportion of four-week waits is just one or two per cent.

The Liberal Democrats want to give everyone the legal right to a GP appointment within a week, or 24 hours if in urgent need.

The party says it would deliver this by increasing the number of GPs by 8,000.

Sir Ed said: “Fixing the GP crisis is critical to saving our NHS.

“If people can get seen quicker, fewer will end up in hospital in the first place.

“That’s better for them, better for the NHS and better for taxpayers.”

In her conference speech today, deputy leader Daisy Cooper will say: “First and foremost, the top priority in Parliament for our 72 Liberal Democrat MPs is being champions for our local health and care services.

“When my team and I set out to develop our key manifesto pledges, we did so knowing that our ideas on health and care could not just transform our electoral prospects - they could transform people’s lives.”

The figures come as Lord Darzi’s landmark report last week, on the state of the NHS, found the UK has almost 16 per cent fewer fully qualified GPs than other high income countries relative to our population.

It said the health service was in a “critical condition” and said more healthcare should be moved away from hospitals and into communities through family doctors.

In its manifesto, Labour promised an additional 40,000 hospital appointments a week, as well as training thousands more GPs.

Sir Keir Starmer guaranteed “a face-to-face appointment for all those who want one and deliver a modern appointment booking system to end the 8am scramble”.

A Department of Health and Social Care spokesperson said: “The NHS is broken. These findings show how much general practice has been neglected. This government will fix this by shifting the focus of healthcare out of the hospital and into the community. 

“We have committed to hiring an extra 1,000 GPs into the NHS by the end of this year. In addition, we have provided a further £311 million towards GP contract funding in 24/25 – an uplift of 7.4 per cent. We will also ensure that GPs have the resources they need to offer patients the highest quality care.”