Government 'still committed' to working with BMA on 'GMS contract reforms'

Exclusive The Government is ‘still committed’ to working with the BMA on GMS ‘contract reforms’, the Department of Health and Social Care has said today.

Yesterday Pulse revealed that GP leaders had raised concerns over a lack ‘any meaningful progress’ from the Government to deliver the promise of a new GMS contract, and were considering going back into dispute with the Government over its 10-year plan.

Pulse understands that two motions about this were debated at a meeting of the BMA’s GP committee yesterday and that GP leaders were asked to vote on whether to re-enter dispute, but results of this vote have not yet been released.

However, DHSC has said today that it still committed to ‘continue working with the BMA on GMS contract reforms’.

It comes after the health secretary told Pulse yesterday that the Government will not replace ‘really effective GP partnerships’ as part of its plans to reform the NHS.

The 10-year plan will introduce two new contracts for neighbourhood services which the Government said will be an ‘alternative’ to GMS, but grassroots GPs and GP leaders have since expressed concern that the plan could threaten GP partnerships.

LMC leaders in Berkshire, Buckinghamshire and Oxfordshire have also raised concerns about the future of GMS, and have called on the GPC to re-enter ‘formal contractual dispute’ with the Government based ‘on the impending threat to our profession evidenced by the 10-year plan’.

In a document analysing the plan, seen by Pulse, the LMCs said that the reforms pose ‘the greatest existential threat to the GP partnership model in living memory’.

It said: ‘If the plan is implemented as written, it seems inevitable that GP partnerships will be largely extinct within 10 years, aside from in very rural areas where there is no alternative, and very large super-partnerships which already fit the 10-year plan neighbourhood model.’

The LMCs also said that they believe that the Government’s promise of a ‘new GP contract’ refers to the two new contracts mentioned in the 10-year plan, rather than to a new wholesale GMS contract which the BMA has been demanding.

The document said: ‘The promise by the Secretary of State made in his letter of 18 March 2025 for a “new substantive GP contract” must be reasonably concluded to mean this contract described in the 10-year plan.

‘Contrary to the hopes of the profession, there is no conceivable prospect of a new core practice-based GP contract to replace GMS which allows practices to operate autonomously as they have done for the past 77 years of the NHS.

‘The traditional GP partnership model is only mentioned this one time in the entire 10 Year Plan, and the term “GMS” does not appear anywhere in the plan, or in the Darzi Review.

‘It should be fairly obvious that the GMS partnership model has no place in the Government’s vision for the NHS, and will only survive where it is unavoidably necessary, such as in very rural areas, or where it is fitting the scale of the 10 year plan, in very large super-partnerships.

‘Given the context of the 10-year plan, and the absence of any mention of GMS or a future for partnerships, one can only conclude that the Neighbourhood Health Service model is the “new GP contract”.’

A DHSC spokesperson told Pulse: ‘GPs will be at the heart of our shift out of hospital and into the community. Our 10 year health plan will offer new contracts for neighbourhood health services as part of this shift.

‘These will be alternative and additional to the GMS contract and not imposed as part of any top-down reforms. Equally we are still committed to continue working with the BMA on GMS contract reforms.

‘Neighbourhood health services will empower GPs to lead a new way of delivering care in the community – our focus will be on ensuring GPs spend more time delivering care for patients and less time doing admin and paperwork.’

Following the plan’s publication, the BMA said it could ‘seriously undermine’ the current GP practice model, revealing that its GP committee had not been allowed to see the plan ahead of publication.

Earlier this week, Mr Streeting told MPs that the 10-year plan reforms will generate ‘enthusiasm’ about working in general practice from future generations of doctors.

Pulse has recently looked at what the 10-year plan will mean for the GP partnership model.

Read all of Pulse’s coverage of the 10-year plan here.