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LMCs to vote on industrial action over ‘unacceptable’ rescue package

LMCs will vote on whether to go ballot the profession on what forms of industrial action they are prepared to take in response to the ‘unacceptable’ General Practice Forward View.

The motion, to be proposed by Tower Hamlets LMC, will be debated tomorrow morning, and follows the call for mass resignations in January, which gave NHS England six months to provide a rescue package.

It will be the profession’s most robust response over whether the General Practice Forward View is adequate as a rescue package.

GPC chair Dr Chaand Nagpaul said this morning that the number of people leaving general practice suggested that mass resignation is ‘an impending reality, and not a threat’.

He also had some praise for the General Practice Forward View, and said that there are 108 measures listed so ‘it would be simplistic to either support or dismiss it in toto’.

But the motion calls on the conference to say it does ‘not accept the General Practice Forward View is an adequate response… and considers this to be sufficient grounds for a trade dispute’.

It proposes that the BMA should ballot the profession on a number of actions: their willingness to sign undated resignations; their willingness to take industrial action; what forms of industrial action they are prepared to take; and produces a report to practices on options for taking industrial action that does not breach their contracts.

In January, the Special LMC Conference voted overwhelmingly to carry a motion proposing that ‘the GPC should canvass GPs on their willingness to submit undated resignations’ unless ’negotiations with government for a rescue package for general practice’ are ’concluded successfully within six months’.

Motion in full

AGENDA COMMITTEE to be proposed by Tower Hamlets: That conference does not accept the General Practice Forward View is an adequate response to the GPCs statement of need within the BMAs Urgent Prescription for General Practice, and considering this to be sufficient grounds for a trade dispute, unless the government agrees to accept the Urgent Prescription within 3 months of this conference, the GPC should ask the BMA to:

(i) ballot the profession on their willingness to sign undated resignations

(ii) ballot the profession on their willingness to take industrial action

(iii) ballot the profession as to what forms of industrial action they are prepared to take

(iv) produce a report to practices on the options for taking industrial action that doesn’t breach their contracts