BMA being ‘turned into a farce’, says Kinnock as GPs consider ‘full-day walkouts’
Primary care minister Stephen Kinnock has accused BMA leaders of turning the organisation ‘into a farce’, after the dispute ‘escalation’ at Friday’s England LMCs conference.
The conference saw local GP leaders vote in favour of undated resignations, refusing online access compliance and boycotting neighbourhood teams not led by general practice.
And, an emergency motion at the end of the day demanded the BMA sets ‘a clear timeline’ for a ballot of the profession, as well as backing new forms of collective action, including full-day walkouts.
LMCs said walkouts would be ‘as a last resort’ to defend general practice and patient safety.
The motion also proposed as collective actions: withdrawal from all shared prescribing, non-compliance with GP Connect and declining to issue sick notes.
Proposing it, Avon LMC’s Dr Shaba Nabi said: ‘For years, I’ve stood in this room and had the same words echo through conference halls: If not now, then when? But the now has never come.
‘Last year’s collective action was a really good start, and it empowered LMCs to take back the interface and to reclaim it. But this is not enough.
‘We’re dealing with a Government that treats GPs with envy disdain, and not only are they calling us laggards, but they’re accusing us of earning more than the Prime Minister and in the background, they’re quietly plotting to end the independent contractor status.
‘Why may you ask? Why are they doing this? Because they want to control us. They want to control the most efficient and productive part of the health service, and we cannot let that happen.
‘So we must act, and we must find leverage, even if that means stepping into some very uncomfortable territory, because the only thing we have going for us is solidarity.’
In her opening speech, BMA GP committee England chair Dr Katie Bramall said that the Government had lied to the profession and ignored the union’s calls to be involved in the current review of the GP funding formula.
However, after the conference, Mr Kinnock said that the union’s current leadership seems ‘determined’ to turn the organisation ‘into a farce’.
He said that the latest ‘escalation’ is ‘founded on untruths’ and ‘will put patient safety at risk’ at a critical time ahead of winter.
And he said it was ‘ludicrous’ to say the Government has ‘betrayed general practice’.
He said: ‘The current leadership of the BMA, whether on the GP committee or Resident Doctors committee, seem determined to turn their organisation into a farce.
‘We’ve always been clear that we want to work constructively with the BMA – but they stand resolutely in the way of changes vital for patient care, and for the progress their members want to see too.
‘This latest escalation is founded on untruths and will put patient safety at risk at a critical time ahead of winter.
‘It’s ludicrous to say the government has betrayed general practice – we have placed GPs at the heart of our 10-Year Health Plan, provided a funding boost of £1.1bn, recruited 2,500 more GPs and cut red tape – as well as launched a review into the distribution of GP funding.’
The motion in full
Motion 260
That conference, in light of GPC England’s decision to enter into dispute with the current Government, demands that a clear timeline be set for an indicative ballot of the profession, to seek engagement and mandate on the following forms of collective and industrial action:
(i) Withdrawal from all shared care prescribing until safe, sustainable, and properly funded arrangements are in place nationally
(ii) Non-compliance with GP Connect, in view of growing concerns over data protection, inappropriate third-party access, and the erosion of patient confidentiality
(iii) Declining to issue sick notes, highlighting that the current process places an unnecessary and unfunded burden on general practice, and that the Government and employers must commission a separate, dedicated service for sickness certification
(iv) Full-day walkouts, as a last resort to defend the survival of general practice and the safety of our patients.
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Please note, only GPs are permitted to add comments to articles
If only the BMA and LMCs had been so aggressive and passionate when the tories were in power for lat 14 years destroying our NHS! I am finding our ‘ leaders’ anti-Labour sentiment when they have given junior doctors massive pay rises and put our NHS top of funding priorities when all are struggling a bit like the current attack on the BBC…has the BMA been taken over by those who want to destroy our NHS so doctors can be privateers again? Beware BMA you are in danger of ruining any remaining reputation doctors have to be trusted to act in patients best interest- only possible if the NHS exists and thrives.
There is quite a lot of gaslighting from Wes Streeting who is both belligerent, provocative, and digging himself an enormous hole.
He’s made all the wrong decisions at the wrong time and should have focused on waiting times from day one rather than a reorganisation of the NHS
Redundancy costs and chaotic reorganisation that he can’t finish or afford.
It is less than clear what his plans are around partnership and general practice.
Any new investment will simply be gobbled up by inflation and staff costs, not to mention the crumbling estate that would cost $15 billion to put right.
Labour was elected against the background of nine, major global pressures;
Covid and the backlog; capacity and workforce pressures.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine; energy price shocks, higher commodity costs, triggering a cost of living increases.
Global and UK inflation; higher interest-rates and tighter public finances.
Supply-chain; cost pressures.
Ageing population and rising chronic disease burden; creating a steady growth in demand for complex services
Social-care effectively collapsed; creating a multiplier effect.
Climate change and extreme weather; increasing unseasonal demand on NHS services.
Geopolitical and macroeconomic uncertainty; trade tensions, migration flows affecting access to labour markets for all public services.Internal workforce discontentment; unprecedented doctor and nurse strikes.
All this was known in July 2024 when Labour won a landslide victory and they…… promised to guide the nation through the nine perils… be a safe pair of hands.
NHS reforms were launched into an environment where cost pressures and demand, pull in opposite directions.
They can’t say ‘we didn’t know’. Nothing has changed. Actually, it’s got worse.
Agree with the sentiments above. Growing up in a Labour family, the turning point was Tony Bliar and the illegal Iraq war plus his disastrous Third Way. Labour has turned away from being progressive, or transformative and offers no new economic perspectives reflecting current debates in economics in order to serve what our country needs.
Post ww2, debt-to-GDP in the UK was 250% (now only 95%), top rate of income tax was 90% through to the 50s into 60s (was 94% in the USA, and stayed high into the 1980s). And the great Labour Govt of the day embarked on a huge spending programme creating the NHS and welfare state, stimulating economic growth. From 1945 to 1970s data shows inequality reduced. And this was when we’d come off the gold standard. Now we’re a free floating fiat sovereign currency, we’ve got even more fiscal space and tools, if we dare to use them. But successive Govts stay aligned with corporate and financial sector interests employing fear, division, and myths about debt and deficits, and use Corporate media to spread false economics and to continue policies that make the rich 1% richer. Why do we put up with it?
Labour needs to spend money into crediting bank reserve accounts to fire up our under-employed resources, capacity in the NHS and other public goods, a job guarantee etc, consider a debt jubilee and taking back monetary control from the BoE in order to stimulate growth and reduce inequality. We don’t need a ww3 to remind us we’re in it together…but perhaps a “war on inequality”.
But I’m not holding my breath for Reeves’s budget.
GPs have finally grown a spine and are fighting back. We need to support the stance 100% . After years of having contracts imposed, we need to make sure government stop thinking we are a push over (we have been since 2004) and think twice before doing what they have done for the last 20 years. I might even join the BMA again if this attitude continues
” Now we’re a free floating fiat sovereign currency, we’ve got even more fiscal space and tools, if we dare to use them.”
Lol. John Maynard Keynes and the magic money tree gang are in the house.
How have fiat currencies worked as a store of value since 1971? A very rapid way to level down everyone into poverty. Taxation and debt do not create wealth. HARD WORK creates wealth. Your prescription simply means there’ll be no wealth less to steal, sorry redistribute.
Pointless posturing from the BMA.
Either abandon the NHS Titanic to it’s fate, or suck it up.
ps. Guernsey Primary Care seems to work well; Taiwan and Australia also rather better than the NHS. The Dentists seem happy with Denplan.
mmm Reform (or whatever next ultra Tory party emerges) will come to the rescue you think? Their brexit is a wonderful decision isn’t it too?….I shudder in anticipation. I was lucky and privileged to become a doctor who worked easing distress in a system that did not encourage me to exploit people for profit like most jobs. Dentists show us the BMA’ s preferred future to privatise health and its awful outcomes for our deprived who need it most- have we mentioned them at all? Doctors are now approx 12 % of NHS staff yet get 50% plus of the pay. Our arrogance that we are the most important and our indifference to the struggles of those we work with and treat daily beggars belief and will anger those affected. The BMA are on the wrong side here as doctors were when NHS was created.
For a primer in getting everything wrong about fiat currency, value, taxation, debt and wealth, then read Bob’s “Economics from the 1970s” above. Bob, wake up, your neoliberal economics patient is Dead.
Fortunately for the rest of us normal people, Value means something far greater (not to be confused with price and cost, as Bob does) and taxation has many purposes, including reducing the money supply, extinguishing money, supporting the currency, redistribution, an inflation lever etc, plus if it’s regressive, making the rich richer! National Debt? We’ve had it since the BoE was created! It’s part of the real economy that we work with. And Wealth is not created by Hard Work. Data shows that’s a lie with roots in Victorian/Dickensian times. Already existing inherited, accumulated and unearned wealth is being compounded (eg see r>g, Piketty), and further increased by rules that favour the rich eg international capital flows, tax loopholes and havens etc.
For those fed up with neoliberal trolls and Tufton St lackeys’ megaphoned BS, I’d try Prof Stephanie Kelton’s The Deficit Myth.
[Also worth reading Prof Steve Keen’s The New Economics and Prof Randall Wray’s Modern Money Theory]
Bob, if you play rugby, give up. Too many blows to the head, mate. Or wear a stove-pipe hat 😁
Dr Shaun Meehan is a retired GP in Merseyside who mentors and tutors PAs and medical students. Important to note for transparency, I think
Every doctor reading the comment above should be horrified and the editor of Pulse should be too- Personal attacks are not transparency but personal attacks. I am firstly a scouser who became a doctor through luck mainly not birthright and I chose to look after those who need it most by devoting my life to NHS working every day. Our public who we are privileged to serve deserve to be looked after by doctors, nurses, PAs and clinicians who are caring, kind and confidential. I know most of the medical students, nurses and PAs I meet tick these boxes. I would refer all who want to comment in any public space to re- read the five key GMC principles attached to the privilege that ‘Dr’ title bestowed on them.
You do know that there are GPs and resident doctors now working as Uber drivers because they cannot find suitable clinical employment, largely due to their deliberate exclusion from ARRS funding in favour of physician associates. My comment was not a personal attack but an attempt to highlight this inequity and to point out that your criticism of the BMA may reflect a conflict of interest, given your previous involvement in PA training. The BMA, after years of largely ineffectual opposition to government neglect and the steady erosion of our terms and conditions, is finally beginning to advocate for the profession before our young doctors choose to leave altogether.
Shaun I don’t think the BMA are trying to privatise health I suspect that is what Labour is currently doing. Have a look at the 10 year plan, have a look at the PFI plans for neighbourhood centres, the opening up to private healthcare providers running primary care as the multi centres, prioritising the Pharmaceutical industry for weight loss instead of the public health solutions in the Dimbleby commission, the prioritisation of AI, US tech billionaires. Doctors are not here to prop up the deliberate funnelling of public money to US multinational corporations. I think the current Labour party is the risk not the BMA or doctors and its not a competition over who gets paid. Frontline staff need to all be paid and if this government stops trying to line the pockets of their donors and lobbyists they could do that. Even with the 21 billion they raised from NI insurance employer payments that has killed job opportunities and the economy Streeting will only use it for private healthcare providers to target elective waiting lists and boast about number when patients have said they want better GP services.
If its not the big corporations this government is not interested.
Not in patients, not in staff, not in the majority of the population-just the big companies I’m afraid.
Income, education, housing, diet and employment (and also now elderly demographic) are the reasons our NHS struggles as always( see Black report 1980 and recent Kings Fund health inequality). BMA argue that to reverse this needs more and more doctors in more and more specialties away from primary care. We struggled to attract doctors to primary care even as doctors specialty posts became oversubscribed..as was inevitable. Over last twenty year universities have quadrupled their doctor numbers with failing health outcomes- why is that if, as BMA argue, more doctors mean better health for all? I would argue that BMA has shifted its position into telling our public the NHS owes doctors much more than many thousands of other workers who work just as hard daily and with much less pay. So we can ignore the needs of our population so doctors get what they need instead. That is a PR disaster for all doctors. Surely we must see that as well as doctors ( I don’t argue for less but must be in primary care!) we need others to tackle these determinants of ill health at a level which deals with diet, employment, housing and education (and elderly care) Thank you for engaging a debate as it should be- I disagree with your assessment-the 21 billion is a tiny part of the hole in our economy from brexit ( 4% plus GDP every year), the disgraceful disruption of our economy by previous budgets and the two dictators in USA and Russia.
Wes Streeting isn’t interested in the NHS. Wes Streeting is interested in the top job. The NHS is a stepping stone that he has put a big boot on. He will soon be looking in his rear view mirror at the destruction left in his wake.