England’s GPs vote to take industrial action

Just days after junior doctors in England were offered a cumulative pay rise of 22 per cent, general practitioners across the country have voted in favour of industrial action over funding. Now over 98 per cent of senior unionised GPs have voted to take industrial action, on a turnout of just under 70 per cent. It comes after months of disputes over contract changes that would see community doctors receive a practice funding uplift of just 1.9 per cent. Slamming the sub-inflationary rise, the BMA says that without more support GP surgeries will ‘struggle to stay financially viable…and risk closure’.

This is the first time in 60 years that family doctors have voted for collective action; the last time general practitioners did so was in 1964. But with increasing patient demands and rising costs, many family doctors fear their surgeries are becoming unsustainable. ‘We are witnessing general practice being broken,’ says the chair of the BMA’s GP committee, Dr Katie Bramall-Stainer. ‘The era of the family doctor has been wiped out by consecutive governments and our patients are suffering as a result.’ Certainly the rate of practice closures has increased in recent years, with over 1,100 GP surgeries in England having closed their doors for good since 2016, while family doctors have gained 350 more patients on average in that time. 

The BMA isn’t proposing GPs across the country walk out of their practices. Instead the union has given physicians ten options to protest the contract: from decreasing the patients seen each day to switching off software that allows some patients to claim cheaper prescriptions. Each practice can choose which form of action to take, the BMA says, and the doctors’ union insists the move will ensure doctors prioritise ‘quality not quantity’. ‘This will not be a “big bang”,’ Dr Bramall-Stainer warns, ‘it will be a slow burn.’

But while a complete shutdown of general practice isn’t on the cards, secondary care facilities up and down the country will be looking on in worry at the announcement. With GPs across England likely to opt to see fewer patients than normal, the concern is that more patients will flock to A&E departments instead – putting yet more strain on struggling hospitals. The scale of the impact won’t become clear for a while, what with different practices opting to take different forms of action, but already there are fears that this could be the start of a ‘whole system collapse’.

Health Secretary Wes Streeting admits today in a letter to general practitioners that ‘the contract needs reform’, adding that ‘the relationship I want with you and the profession isn’t simply a contractual one, but a partnership’. But to save general practice, doctors are adamant community medicine needs better funding, faster. The workforce crisis facing the NHS undoubtedly plays a part as patient demand continues to rise, and some veteran GPs argue that directing money to train and retain medics will ease pressures elsewhere in the system. Other community doctors feel that more could be done to incentivise GPs to work overtime. But the question as ever for Sir Keir Starmer’s government is: where exactly would this money come from?