Johnson: David Cameron 'too keen on wooing GPs'

Health secretary Alan Johnson has criticised Conservatives leader David Cameron for being too ‘determined to woo GPs'.

Writing in The Guardian, Mr Johnson reiterated his jibe that Mr Cameron had positioned the Tories as ‘the political wing of the BMA' and attacked his plans to scrap many of Labour's NHS reforms.

He wrote: ‘His plan to scrap national standards for fighting MRSA and C diff, which the NHS has cut by 62% and 33%, will endanger the progress we've made. So determined is he to woo GPs that he has opposed our decision to link part of a GP's pay to evening and weekend opening.

‘He believes in primary care access being for the convenience of the practice, not the patient.'

Mr Johnson said he ‘applauded a great deal of the sentiment' in Mr Cameron's speeches on public services, but that he has ‘spent far more time thinking about careful delivery of speeches than fair delivery of public services'.