DHSC and NHSE cancel all meetings with BMA GP leaders

Exclusive The Department of Health and Social Care and NHS England have cancelled all meetings with the BMA’s GP Committee, amid the dispute around 1 October contract changes.

Pulse understands they took this action following last week’s England LMC conference, which the Government has complained ‘escalated’ the dispute, and where the GP Committee England chair accused ministers to having ‘lied’ to the profession.

In an update sent to BMA GP members yesterday evening, GPC England chair Dr Katie Bramall said the order to cancel all meetings with GPC England came from health secretary Wes Streeting.

Her update said: ‘Clearly, the truth hurts. We have subsequently seen Government and our detractors not just brief against us in the press, but following conference, Mr Streeting has instructed NHSE and DHSC to cancel all current meetings with GPCE.’

Pulse has further seen an email from NHS England to GPCE, cancelling a planned upcoming meeting on 20 November.

The email, signed NHS England’s GP contracts team, said: ‘We are currently reviewing how we work together with GPCE moving forward; therefore we will be taking this meeting out of the diary for now’.

It added that they would be ‘in touch in due course’ with the GPCE.

It comes as Pulse exclusively revealed yesterday that a large number of GPCE members feel they have been ‘misled’ by the executive team of the committee over what was agreed as part of this year’s GP contract.

Dr Bramall did not address the allegations in her member update, but she said: ‘We will be holding an extended series of webinars starting next month, sharing with the profession exactly what was agreed, and when, as well as teasing out what comes next.’

At last week’s LMC conference, local GP leaders backed a number of dispute escalation motions, including the potential of full-day walkouts; undated resignations; refusing online access compliance; and boycotting neighbourhood teams not led by general practice.

In her member update, Dr Bramall said: ‘As your GPC England officers, we stand ready: to get back round the negotiating table and to stand ready to lead if the profession takes the decision to act. It is easy to feel the pressure, but the power to change everything is in our gift.’

She also highlighted the health secretary’s speech this week to the NHS Providers conference, where he spoke of the new neighbourhood teams – and the related new contracts which can be held by both hospitals and GP providers.

Dr Bramall said: ‘The reforms will give more power and autonomy to local leaders and systems to reduce red tape and bureaucracy, so they have more freedom to better deliver health services for their local communities. What this means for general practice and its commissioning is far from certain.’

And she warned Mr Streeting that ‘what we [GPs] collectively decide could make or break the current ambitions of the 10-year plan’.

‘It is clear that general practice is the clear solution to so many of the Government’s current challenges, they need to start moving away from labelling us as the problem.’

As revealed by Pulse yesterday, GPCE’s executive has come under fire for allegedly withholding key information from the wider committee during contract negotiations.

DHSC has provided written evidence showing that, before the GPC executive agreed to the final contract, they were told the new October requirements for online access would go ahead without any software safeguards, and a line in the email from Government negotiators also said practices were responsible for discouraging patients from submitting urgent requests.

Many GPC members have told Pulse that this crucial detail was not shared with them before they voted on the contract.

Pulse has contacted the DHSC, NHS England and BMA for comment.