Spending review allocations ‘will make or break general practice’, says GPC chair

NHS budget allocations following the Government’s spending review ‘will make or break general practice’, the BMA’s GP committee chair has said.

Yesterday the chancellor specified GP training as a priority investment area while announcing a £29bn funding boost for the NHS until the end of this Parliament.

According to the Treasury announcement, ‘thousands more GPs’ will be ‘trained’ with the money which will see real terms day-to-day spending on NHS services increase by 3% on average.

However, the announcement was light on detail around how this money will be allocated, and the BMA’s GP committee chair Dr Katie Bramall said that it is now ‘crucial’ to determine how that budget will be spent through allocations ‘in the coming weeks’.

She also said she spoke to primary care minister Stephen Kinnock following the announcement and was ‘heartened’ by his commitment to see through Government promises to shift resources into care closer to home.

And she pointed out that there needs to be ‘significant additional investment’ alongside a new wholesale GMS contract, which the Government committed to earlier this year during contract negotiations for 2025/26.

Dr Bramall said: ‘The announcement of a 3% rise for the Department of Health in the Government’s spending review defines the NHS budget until the next election – but of critical importance is determining how that budget will be spent through allocations in the coming weeks, which will make or break general practice.

‘Almost three quarters of NHS patient contact each year resides inside the 6,300 GP surgeries across England, yet we have hundreds of GPs facing unemployment – a number set to top 1,000 this Summer – whilst practices lack the resources to hire additional GPs.

‘We need to see significant additional investment alongside the much-feted new GP contract promise to fix the front door to the NHS, including a national GP retention strategy; pay restoration for salaried GPs; resource to fund better terms for practice nurses; a marked expansion in GP training numbers; and a focus on academic GPs –  this is not a quick-fix, but Mr Streeting’s single opportunity after fifteen years of damaging under-funding, to see sustained investment to secure the long-term future of general practice.’

Following the spending review yesterday, the BMA said that GP representatives will now be looking ‘carefully’ at whether the funding will allow the Government to deliver the new GP contract it has committed to, and ‘crucially’ if it will address the ‘absurd situation’ where more GPs are needed, but GPs are struggling to find work.