LMCs call on Government to ‘pause and re-evaluate’ unlimited GP access policies

GP leaders have called on all UK governments to ‘pause and re-evaluate’ their policies on unlimited GP access, as they create an environment for ‘clinician burnout and unsafe practice’.

At their conference in Belfast today, LMC representatives voted in favour of a motion calling on the GPC to lobby for digital access policies that prioritise clinical need, continuity of care, and health equity over ‘arbitrary access targets and response times’.

They also called for GP practices to have free and autonomous choice of digital access platforms, enabling delivery models that reflect local circumstances.

The conference highlighted that governments around the UK are promoting an ‘Amazon-style’, unlimited GP access model, and that the current approach to ‘digital-first policies’, including mandatory access, is ‘not fit for purpose’.

Proposing the motion, Dr Shamit Shah said: ‘We’re increasingly seeing across all four nations is the promotion of an Amazon-style model of general practice, one built around unlimited on demand access, regardless of workforce capacity or clinical need.

‘Unlike Amazon, there is no prime extra subscription, there is no expensive delivery fee, and, most importantly, no payment per item or service.

‘The illusion that this model is deliverable and sustainable within general practice is therefore beyond reality, and we must be honest about the consequences of this unlimited access in an already overwhelmed system does not create better care.

‘It creates more demand, more over medicalisation, more fragmented care and more pressure on a workforce already stretched beyond the safe limits.’

Supporting the motion, Dr Austin Nichol, from Glasgow LMC, said: ‘We’re being pushed by politicians across all four nations toward an on demand model of general practice, one that promises speed and unlimited access but delivers something very different.

‘In reality, a digital first model entrenches the inverse care law, because when access is made frictionless and immediate, it is not distributed by need. It is consumed by those best able to engage, the digitally confident, the keyboard articulate, and crucially, the clinically less complex.

‘Meanwhile, our most vulnerable patients, the frail elderly, those with language barriers, those with no digital means or access, the majority of whom are in poverty, are competing in a system that no longer prioritizes them.’

It comes as the BMA is currently coordinating collective action in England in protest at unlimited access as stipulated by the imposed 2026/27 GP contract.

As part of the contract, GPs in England have to ‘deal with’ all urgent patient requests on the ‘same day’.

Earlier this year, a study found that Government policies aimed at improving access to general practice may lead to ‘lower patient confidence’.

A Pulse white paper and investigation last year exposed a widening gap between how access is discussed in policy circles vs. how it is actually experienced in practices.