The shadow health secretary has promised to give GPs ‘an awful lot to be optimistic about’ if the Labour Party is elected this year, with contract negotiations not needing to be ‘a showdown’.
Speaking at the Times Health Summit yesterday, Wes Streeting said ‘GP contract reform’ would come up early after the next general election, which is expected in the second half of this year.
And he told attendees he does not think ‘this needs to be hand-to-hand combat’ and that Labour plans to ‘give GPs an awful lot to be optimistic about’.
‘GP contract reform will be just one of those things, just in terms of the cycle, that will come up early after the next general election,’ Mr Streeting said.
‘And actually, I don’t think it needs to be a showdown, I don’t think this needs to be hand-to-hand combat.’
The GP contract for 2025/26 is likely to bring more reforms than the upcoming contract, which NHS England has described as a ‘stepping stone’ since the commissioner is not in a position to negotiate a new five-year deal.
Labour’s NHS mission, announced last year, includes three ‘shifts’, including moving care away from hospitals and closer to the community.
The shadow health secretary told attendees yesterday that to achieve this, general practice will have a ‘bigger role’ but recognised ‘the enormous resource constraints’ GPs are facing.
He added: ‘I think we will give GPs an awful lot to be optimistic about. And we’ll also give them the reassurance that patients’ data – which by the way ought to belong to patients and patients should have power and control over. Not producers – patients.
‘I think we will give GPs an awful lot to be enthusiastic and excited about, which will be a stark contrast to how many GPs are feeling today.’
Labour has previously said it will conduct a shake-up of GP services to create new ‘neighbourhood health centres’ which seem to resemble to party’s old ‘polyclinic’, or Darzi centre, model.
Mr Streeting has also said he wants to give GP practices financial incentives to let patients see the same doctor every time, in a bid to boost continuity of care.
Labour’s position on the partnership model shifted throughout 2023 – in January the shadow health secretary said he wants to ‘tear up’ the ‘murky, opaque’ GP contract, but by October, he seemed more open-minded, saying he now recognises the ‘value GP partners provide’.
Yesterday at the event, Mr Streeting also hinted he would be willing to go into battle with GPs regarding patient data sharing.
When asked about the ‘reluctance’ of GPs to agree to data sharing projects such as the Biobank, Mr Streeting said that this was ‘an appalling capitulation on the part of the Government’.
In September, the UK Biobank, with the support of the RCGP and NHS England, asked all GP practices to release patient data via their IT systems which would be used for health-related research.
The BMA refused to endorse this letter, with chair of the GP Committee in England Dr Katie Bramall-Stainer highlighting that adhering to the request to share data is ‘not contractual’.
But Mr Streeting said the UK Biobank’s work ‘is absolutely critical to the future of the health and care system’.
He said using patient data ‘intelligently’ and ‘ethically’ could deliver more personalised medicine, allow for better population health management, and for better allocation of ‘scarce resources’.
He also pointed out that general practice is often excluded from research and innovation projects.
‘When you take a whole section of our system, a really important section – primary care and general practice – and say “but not you”, that is an enormous missed potential, and one that we cannot afford to waste.’
Mr Streeting added that ‘this will form part of conversation we have to have with GPs’.
His comments come as the BMA has urged GPs to join the union and prepare for industrial action in the case of another contract imposition by the Government – whose working offer to GPs is of a 1.9% baseline GMS uplift.
The Times Health Commission published its report this week, suggesting 10 reforms to the NHS and social care. One of the top recommendations was that patients should have digital ‘passports’ which hold all of their records, test results, and referral letters.
At the same event, health secretary Victoria Atkins suggested that GP data could be included in the controversial federated data platform (FDP) but acknowledged GP concerns about data privacy.
Will the continuity payments be paid when the patient sees one of the only 2 GPs in the practice every time they see a doctor, even if they see other staff types 7 times more than their doctor?
I’m afraid, although inevitably our future, nothing Wes Streeting says fills me with any confidence of any kind.
How is it with each ‘new initiative’ things just keeping getting worse for GP’s actually sitting in surgeries – and the poor patients trying to actually see one?
Agree. If it’s not clear, it should be by now. The GP contractor model is going to be extinct soon regardless of Tory or Labour being in power (influenced either by Koch bros or by Tony blair institute philosophy). The only question is whether GP principals choose to go out with a bang or a whimper.
No plan. No idea. Might as well appoint Daffy Duck.
No plan, just vague generalisations and constant screams of ‘reform!’
I do recognise and appreciate the shift in tone from previous comments on ‘tearing up’ the contract, it’s just a shame it was said at all before he had really got to grips with the contractor model and how much value it brings.
But they remain clueless on what exactly they want to do. Continuity – fine if thats what you want, but HOW are you going to implement that? A large practice with many GPs and many AHPs is going to struggle to offer every patient the exact clinician they want every time. A single hander will achieve it by default. Also, sometimes patients want to see GPs for problems another staff member can deal with eg. A wound dressing. Are we to penalise practices who say ‘no, that’s a nurse appointment not a GP’? Or, when a patient has a medication query and wants to see a GP rather than the practice pharmacist, are we to allow that, wasting a GP appointment that could have been used on a more complex case? These are the nuances they simply haven’t thought about.
And on data sharing – when you introduce draconian GDPR legislation for which the penalty for breaching is an unlimited fine, you can not be surprised when small organisations such as GPs, take the safer option of just refusing to share. We do not have large legal departments from which we can get advice on data sharing law. The government created this problem.