RCGP Scottish Advocacy Guide

Arranging a practice visit

Inviting your local MSP/s to visit your practice is a great way of showing them what things are really like on the frontline. This will help them to better appreciate the pressures facing general practice and the work that GPs and their teams deliver - this will help inform their decision making in Parliament.

Contact the RCGP Scotland Policy and Public Affairs team

As your membership body we are here to help you. This guide offers some tips, but we are keen to know if you hear back from MSPs and support you for any visit.

Contact RCGP Scotland's Policy and Public Affairs Team at infoscotland@rcgp.org.uk

Arranging to host a meeting

Different practices will have different rules and systems for gaining permission to invite politicians to their practice. In many practices it will be important to get the permission of all the partners before you arrange a visit.

Invite the MSPs

If you want to invite MSPs to visit your practice, you can use a template letter designed by RCGP Scotland which you can edit with your own information before sending.

In Scotland, each person is represented by eight different MSPs - one constituency MSP, and seven regional MSPs. We recommend that you are selective in who you invite - you don't want all eight to accept an invitation at once! Our tool makes it clear who your representatives are and allows you to tick who the invite goes to.

Arrange the visit

It may take some time for MSPs to respond. Once you have received a response from an MSP, remember to ask how long their visit is likely to be so that you can plan accordingly.

Plan the visit

Once you have confirmed the date and time, confirm with them how long they can stay with you and what you would like to do. Here is an example schedule - you should tailor it to highlight what's important to your practice:

11:00 - Reception

• Welcome and introductions
• Practice information: contractual model
• Patient list demographics and size
• Practice team makeup

11:05 - 11:45 - Tour of practice

• Value of the GP: variety, complexity, continuity
• Workload pressures and wellbeing
• Premises and IT challenges

11:45 - 12:00 - Private available space

• Sit down discussion, refreshment
• Answering any questions
• Meet GPs and staff: Make sure practice staff are aware of the visit, and the locations for the practice tour are available. You may want to work with the practice staff to decide responsibilities on the day of the visit.
• Patient confidentiality: Make sure the visit doesn't affect patients attending the practice at that time. You may want to ask the MSP to sign a confidentiality agreement.
• Agree on social media posts: Politicians generally want to use social media to publicise their visit. You can also thank them for coming on your own social media along with a picture.

Know what you want to say and show

This is the most important part of the visit. MSPs will want to know what the issues facing general practice means to you specifically - how it’s impacted you professionally and personally, and most importantly what it means for your patients.

This doesn’t mean you should only talk about the negatives: this is also a chance to talk about how you help your patients and about any innovative work that your practice does.

These resources will help you prepare:

• You can read up on RCGP Scotland's asks of political parties in our manifesto, General practice: The solution to the NHS crisis.
• You can also read our flagship paper, Whole person medical care: The value of the general practitioner, which outlines key statistics and celebrates the immense value that GPs bring to the health system.
• Putting across these positive persuasive arguments will ensure that MSPs are left in no doubt about the importance of GPs to our health and care system.

Send a thank you

Send a letter or email to thank them for the meeting. If you committed to provide them with any additional information you could include this in your email.

Tell us about your visit

Please do let us know how the visit went. We're ready to answer any questions you may have, or support with follow-up actions after the meeting.

General practice: the solution to the NHS crisis

RCGP Scotland Election Manifesto 2026

Ahead of the 2026 Scottish Parliament elections, RCGP Scotland’s manifesto ‘General practice: the solution to the NHS crisis’ sets out seven steps to strengthen general practice and protect patient care.