Rishi Sunak showing ‘baffling lack of urgency’ on GP workforce, says BMA

The BMA has warned that Prime Minister Rishi Sunak is showing a ‘baffling lack of urgency’ when it comes to restoring the GP workforce.

In a speech setting out priorities for the year ahead yesterday, Mr Sunak failed to mention general practice but he said an NHS workforce strategy would be published ‘early this year’.

However, BMA council chair Professor Philip Banfield said the Prime Minister’s New Year priorities, one of which was to cut NHS waiting times, did not address the current crisis in the NHS.

The speech ‘showed a baffling lack of urgency in addressing a crisis that the whole country can see with their own eyes has brought the NHS to its knees’, said Professor Banfield, nothing that the Prime Minister ‘refuses to even admit there is a crisis.’

Professor Banfield added: ‘He mentioned the upcoming workforce strategy sometime “early this year” as if it is something we can afford to wait for. We must be clear that retaining and growing the workforce, as soon as we possibly can, is our way out of this mess.’

The NHS in England lost a further 77 GPs in November last year – the latest month for which data was available – and close to 500 in the year leading up to it.

Since 2015, when the Government pledged to hire 5,000 additional GPs, 1,900 full-time-equivalent GPs have been lost from the NHS and nearly a quarter of these – 471 – left in the last year.

‘If we can retain the exhausted staff we have and recruit to the thousands of vacancies by paying staff the wages they deserve, we’ll be able to start making headway on the need for care from both hospitals and GP practices,’ Professor Banfield said.

‘We’ll be able to create a strong social care system to help move people out of hospital and into the community. We’ll be able to give the care that our patients need and deserve.’

And he said that ‘most pressingly’, having sufficient staffing will mean that ‘we’ll be able to treat those who are presenting at A&E’.

‘Our members are telling us that the NHS is in the worst state it’s ever been; patients are being treated in cupboards, hospitals are running out of oxygen cannisters, and staff, rushed off their feet, are breaking down in tears mid-shift.

‘Although Mr Sunak said he is aware of the acute pressures facing emergency departments, there was absolutely no attempt to offer any immediate support, or to encourage those currently working in the NHS to return for another shift.’

Earlier this week the BMA called for an urgent injection of funding from the Government to ease pressures, as Doctors Association UK revealed GPs are being forced to drive patients to hospitals amid ambulance delays.

Professor Banfield said: ‘The NHS is collapsing before our eyes, but today’s speech lacked the detail staff needed to know that they haven’t been abandoned, and that the health service will be given what it needs to survive.

‘Mr Sunak said he wants to be held accountable, and we are happy to oblige. He will be held accountable, as this crisis inevitably worsens and more staff and patients suffer as a result.’

In October, it was revealed that Rishi Sunak’s appointment letter to health secretary Steve Barclay quietly dropped the target to recruit 6,000 more GPs in England by the end of 2024.