LLANELLI AM Lee Waters has raised concerns regarding the future provision of out of hours GP services in Llanelli following what he claims were phone calls from concerned residents who had told him that the Health Board were going to ‘pull the plug’ on the out-of-hours GP services in Llanelli.
Mr Waters told Llanelli Online “I’ve been contacted by constituents who have heard that the Health Board are going to ‘pull the plug’ on out-of-hours GPs services in Llanelli.
I’ve just been in touch with the Health Board Chief Executive and he assures me that is not the case.
As result of new HMRC rules, GPs working for themselves (which is most of them) will have to pay more national insurance contributions from November 1st. They currently submit an invoice for their shift but will now have to go onto payroll, which means they’ll have to pay more tax.
This applies to all of Wales. If enough of the GPs decide not to carry on providing cover there will be big problems with out-of-hours services across the country. I can’t believe the HMRC didn’t think about this!
The Health Board Chief Executive has told me this morning “there are no plans to shift the service to Glangwili. We expect the service to continue to run from Llanelli without change”.
Clearly this needs to be sorted immediately and I have just tabled an Emergency Question in the National Assembly to the Health Minister to ask what the Welsh Government is planning to do.
I’ll keep people posted on my Facebook page. But people can be assured that Nia Griffith and I will stay on top of it”.
We are awaiting a response from the Health Board.
