GPs will not 'be quiet' if Government breaks new contract promise, says BMA

General practice will not ‘be quiet’ should Government promises around a new wholesale GMS contract be broken, the BMA’s GP committee chair has said.

In a video message to GPs on the NHS 10-year plan, Dr Katie Bramall said that the document is ‘big on ideas’ and ‘quite light on the necessary detail’ and that the BMA has ‘significant concerns’ about it.

She added that questions about the plan, which came out earlier this month, will be put to primary care minister Stephen Kinnock this week as he will attend a meeting of GPC England.

The BMA has been promised a new wholesale GMS contract to come into force by 2028, which would be the biggest set of reforms to general practice in two decades.

It comes after the BMA raised concerns that the 10-year plan could ‘seriously undermine’ the current GP practice model, revealing that its GP committee had not been allowed to see the plan ahead of publication.

She said: ‘I’m really struggling to see how this plan is going to deliver a general practice that’s both fit for 2035 and is going to keep what has made it special since 1948. Can you balance continuity of care with working at scale?

‘The Government seem to think so, but I’m not that confident. I think it all absolutely hangs on getting a new contract for practices, and Wes Streeting and Stephen Kinnock have reaffirmed their commitment to this. That’s our only real hope to safeguard the future of NHS general practice.

‘Stephen Kinnock is going to be coming to GPC England to answer the questions that the committee has. The committee has been debating this 10-year plan from the moment of its publication, and we’ve all got significant concerns.’

She added that decisions around spending, budgets and contracts which will be taken in September are going to determine if Labour is ‘serious about bringing back the family doctor’.

Dr Bramall added: ‘Only then will we know for sure if those promises are going to be kept, and if so, we will do all we can to make this a success. But if promises are broken, then general practice cannot be quiet.

‘We will tell it as it is to the one and a half million voters that we see every single day, and that will make or break this Government at the ballot box.’

Health secretary Wes Streeting and Mr Kinnock explained that the plan ‘is not a list of instructions written on a tablet of stone’, but the beginning of ‘an iterative process’, Dr Bramall said.

She added: ‘This plan was kept very close to the heart of Government and has had very little input from anyone who does the day job.

‘There is much in this plan which is causing GPs profound concern. The independent contractor model is essential for the success of general practice, and with it the NHS.

‘And despite the huge strains that it’s been placed under, it continues to deliver day after day. This plan talks about the potential for such immense change, I cannot see how the independent contractor status is not going to be under real threat.’

She told GPs that now it is ‘crunch time’ as decisions are being made about where that £29bn pounds given to the Department of Health ‘will be spent and when’.

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

And the BMA previously raised concerns about plans to transfer some ICB functions to neighbourhood teams, saying that these pose an ‘existential threat’ to GPs as independent contractors.

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