Tony Blair's sister-in-law says she can't find a GP

The Prime Minister's sister-in-law, Lauren Booth, highlights the pressures on the health service today with an unhappy tale about the difficulties of finding a GP.

Ms Booth, half-sister of Cherie Blair, is five months pregnant and has been without a GP since moving house a year ago. Writing in the New Statesman, where she has a weekly column, Ms Booth says: "Since last summer I have tried to play every GP in the book. First there's the 'turn up in person in nice clothes' ploy. This got me as far as a form to fill in at two rather nice surgeries ... The forms were completed and then came identical phone calls 'Sorry there's no space left on our lists'."

Yesterday she said she had been trying surgeries "virtually on a weekly basis" without success. "Now I have been told the only way to find a GP is to go to NHS Direct and get allocated to one," she said.

The British Medical Association said last month that thousands of GPs had closed their lists to new patients because they believed they could not safely manage their increased workload. The Department of Health accepts the problem and is recruiting extra doctors.

Ms Booth says in the New Statesman that her problems have been aggravated because her 22-month-old daughter, Alexandra, has not been vaccinated. "We tried to join a practice in Crouch End last summer, after moving from another London borough. We actually got inside a room with a doctor in it and talked face to face about health issues worrying me. But then came the moment of truth. The doc asked: 'Has your baby had all the inoculations – DPT, Hib, MMR?' 'No, she hasn't,' I replied. That doesn't make a difference does it?" Ms Booth was again told that no spaces were available.