For most of us, our GP is our first port of call when we are worried about our health.

But having heard from so many families, and from my own experiences, I know that the 8am scramble means securing an appointment feels like more of a wish than a guarantee.

I know for residents; the knock-on effects are devastating and cause huge amounts of worry.

Serious conditions going undiagnosed, backlogs building up and nationally millions of people are waiting more than a month to be seen, often in pain and discomfort. It can’t go on.

GPs and NHS staff do incredible work to look after us and our loved ones when we need them.

But despite their heroic efforts, I am really concerned that the last Conservative Government has left surgeries over-stretched and under-staffed.

The figures are stark, we’ve lost over 2,000 GPs since 2015 and shockingly 350 practices have closed across the country.

It can’t go on like this. And with the new housing developments we have seen across our towns and villages, we need to make sure there are even more GPs being put in place to match this.

I’m proud that building an NHS fit for the future is one of Labour’s five missions for government.

We’ve got a 10-year plan of change and modernisation: a strategy to train the next generation of NHS staff and reform primary care to deliver better access to GPs, moving care out of hospital and into the community, and shifting the focus to prevention.

We will speed up treatment and confront the pressures in GP surgeries, ending the non-dom tax status to pay to train 7,500 more doctors a year, create 10,000 extra nursing and midwifery clinical placements a year, bring back the family doctor, and give patients real choice.

But this will take time, and given the scale of the challenge locally, we can’t be content to wait.

One of my five priorities for our constituency is making sure we can get a doctor and a dentist when we need it. Key to this is unlocking new capacity.

That’s why I’ve already got the ball rolling to support local plans for GP expansion. That’s why I’ve already met with GP practices like Lower Stondon and Shefford to see how I can support options to expand and help them better serve their growing populations.

And where GP surgeries performance has been dipping as they struggle to manage patient loads, like in Arlesey and Stotfold, I’ve worked on a cross party basis with local councillors and stakeholders to hold them to account in implementing new triage systems and committing to bringing new GPs on board.

There’s still further to go on all these and more, but it’s time to get back to ensuring a doctor will be there for all of us when we need it and I’m determined to do all that I can to deliver that for our towns and villages.