Dr Steve Taylor was speaking on national radio about a survey by Pulse, which found that an estimated quarter of GP referrals to secondary care are returned as unsolicited Advice and Guidance.

He told listeners of Times Radio that the additional workload was putting further pressure on an already overstretched general practice.

Dr Taylor said GPs were paid 20% less in real terms than 10 years ago as he called on the Government to invest in general practice to help ease pressure across the NHS and improve access for patients.

Underemployed GPs

He said there were around 3,000 underemployed GPs who could work more hours if practices had the resources to employ them.

“If the money was available today, we could have 10% more appointments tomorrow,” he said.

Dr Taylor said that hospital waiting lists had increased significantly since 2010, when around 2 million people were waiting for hospital treatment compared with approximately 7 million today.

“Over that period we’ve seen 20% more work being done in general practice,” he said. “Last month a record 35 million appointments took place in general practice, half of those with GPs. Compare that with the 2 million who attended A&E.

“GPs are really frustrated. We just want to see more funding in primary care, to employ the unemployed and underemployed GPs and get the whole thing working better again.”

Advice and Guidance

Advice and Guidance was introduced to help GPs seek specialist input while patients waited for hospital care, or before making a referral.

However, Dr Taylor said it had increasingly resulted in hospitals returning referrals to GPs with requests for further work to be carried out in primary care.

He said: “If I’m dealing with all the referral bounce backs, and I’m also dealing with the people that are waiting for hospital treatments, then there are going to be issues for me providing appointments for today.”

Listen to the interview with Dr Taylor on the DAUK Instagram.

DAUK committee members are all volunteers and campaign on issues facing frontline doctors in their own time. Please support our work by joining DAUK or donating to our GoFundMe.

GP Online and Pulse have both reported on our call for Yvette Cooper and Prime Minister Andy Burnham to make five commitments to healthcare.

Pulse highlighted our call for the new Government to ‘properly fund general practice to provide timely access, continuity and safe clinical decision making’.

Read the Pulse article in full.

Access requirements

GP Online, meanwhile, highlighted our call to ‘pause unfunded or unsafe access requirements until they have been independently safety tested and properly resourced’.

Read the GP Online article in full.

DAUK wrote to Cooper earlier this week to welcome her to the role and set out five priorities for healthcare.

Five commitments

• End the medical training bottleneck. Publish specialty by specialty training numbers, fund a credible expansion to meet medical school output and NHS need, and guarantee fair progression for doctors already serving the NHS, including SAS doctors and locally employed doctors.
• Guarantee doctor-led assessment where it matters most. Set national standards so that patients urgently referred by a GP, and patients with undifferentiated symptoms in hospital, are assessed by a doctor or have discharge approved by one. Non-doctor roles should complement doctors, never replace medical assessment.
• Rebuild the family doctor model. Properly fund general practice to provide timely access, continuity and safe clinical decision making. Pause unfunded or unsafe access requirements until they have been independently safety tested and properly resourced.
• Restore fair and independent medical regulation. Remove the GMC’s separate power to appeal decisions of its own tribunal, protect the independence of the MPTS and ensure independent oversight sits with the Professional Standards Authority. A regulator cannot credibly be investigator, prosecutor and appellant.
• Treat the climate and nature crisis as an urgent health crisis, ensuring health infrastructure is adapted to be safe in extreme heat by introducing enforceable maximum safe temperatures for healthcare facilities, delivering a public awareness campaign on the relationship between climate change and health, and supporting an accelerated program of decarbonisation and nature restoration for health.

Dr Matt Kneale, DAUK co-chair, said: “These are practical, deliverable reforms that would improve patient safety, retain skilled clinicians and demonstrate that the Government is listening to those delivering care every day.

“We would welcome an early meeting with you and your team to discuss how frontline clinicians can help shape and deliver this programme.”

We are a non-profit campaigning and lobbying organisation led by frontline doctors, for frontline doctors. We are volunteers and our collective aim is to give frontline workers a voice to be heard.

Please support our work by contributing to our crowd funder.

Dr Alison George, of the Doctors’ Association UK (DAUK) GP team, criticised the decision not to ‘protect staff health’.

She was responding to the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) guidance that the age at which people are offered an NHS Covid vaccine should rise from 75 to 80 in autumn 2027.

Reducing vaccination

Dr George said: “Reducing vaccination to such a small group gives the impression to the public that we do not need to worry about Covid any more and that it can only harm the very oldest and most vulnerable in society.

“This is not the case at all and will do nothing to encourage members of the public to protect themselves and those around them from a disease that is spread easily.

“From an NHS staff member perspective it just confirms that DHSC and NHSE leaders have zero interest in protecting staff health.”

Dr Steve Taylor, DAUK GP co-lead, spoke to the BMJ about the guidance.

Vulnerable and marginalised

He said: “This issue with a raised age group again gives the wrong impression of the failure of the NHS to care for the vulnerable and marginalised.

“It also means some NHS staff will feel that their health doesn’t matter. This feels like cost cutting rather than genuine choice over health benefits and certainly affects staff at risk.

“As DAUK has said previously, it will backfire, with staff sickness and absences. This should be a choice for staff and older patients.”

We are a non-profit campaigning and lobbying organisation led by frontline doctors, for frontline doctors. We are volunteers and our collective aim is to give frontline workers a voice to be heard.

Please support our work by contributing to our crowd funder.

DAUK welcomed the appointment of Cooper as an opportunity to restore trust, strengthen public services and place patient safety at the heart of NHS reform.

Dr Matt Kneale, DAUK co-chair, said: “The NHS does not lack the commitment of its staff. It lacks a coherent settlement that enables enough doctors to train and stay, protects patients when they are most vulnerable and gives clinicians confidence that policy is driven by evidence rather than short term expediency.”

Dr Steve Taylor, DAUK GP co-lead, added: “We welcome Yvette Cooper into her role as the new Health and Social Care Secretary, and look forward to the opportunity to work with her.

“She takes on the role with so much to do and many in the NHS workforce disillusioned.

Collaboration and listening

“We look forward to a new day of collaboration and listening to the people who work in the NHS and patient voices. Top down reorganisation and implementation is not the answer.”

With GPs and consultants in dispute with Government, waiting lists still at record levels and pressures across the system, it’s important that she understands the challenges ahead.

“The previous spin of success hid a lot of issues but there are solutions to be found in collaboration.”

DAUK has asked Cooper and new Prime Minister Andy Burnham to make five commitments to healthcare.

Five commitments

• End the medical training bottleneck. Publish specialty by specialty training numbers, fund a credible expansion to meet medical school output and NHS need, and guarantee fair progression for doctors already serving the NHS, including SAS doctors and locally employed doctors.
• Guarantee doctor-led assessment where it matters most. Set national standards so that patients urgently referred by a GP, and patients with undifferentiated symptoms in hospital, are assessed by a doctor or have discharge approved by one. Non-doctor roles should complement doctors, never replace medical assessment.
• Rebuild the family doctor model. Properly fund general practice to provide timely access, continuity and safe clinical decision making. Pause unfunded or unsafe access requirements until they have been independently safety tested and properly resourced.
• Restore fair and independent medical regulation. Remove the GMC’s separate power to appeal decisions of its own tribunal, protect the independence of the MPTS and ensure independent oversight sits with the Professional Standards Authority. A regulator cannot credibly be investigator, prosecutor and appellant.
• Treat the climate and nature crisis as an urgent health crisis, ensuring health infrastructure is adapted to be safe in extreme heat by introducing enforceable maximum safe temperatures for healthcare facilities, delivering a public awareness campaign on the relationship between climate change and health, and supporting an accelerated program of decarbonisation and nature restoration for health.

Dr Kneale said: “These are practical, deliverable reforms that would improve patient safety, retain skilled clinicians and demonstrate that the Government is listening to those delivering care every day.

“We would welcome an early meeting with you and your team to discuss how frontline clinicians can help shape and deliver this programme.”

We are a non-profit campaigning and lobbying organisation led by frontline doctors, for frontline doctors. We are volunteers and our collective aim is to give frontline workers a voice to be heard.

Please support our work by contributing to our crowd funder.

DAUK is part of SOS NHS Coalition of health organisations and unions which has written to the prospective prime minister urging him to secure the long-term future of the NHS.

The letter, which has been featured in the Guardian, also asks Burnham to meet members of the coalition to listen to their experiences of the NHS and social care.

Meanwhile, DAUK GP co-lead Dr Steve Taylor has contributed to an article exploring ‘a surge in portfolio working’ among GPs.

Underemployed and unemployed GPs

GP Online has reported that two-thirds of UK doctors have portfolio careers, which combine clinical work with work in other areas such as teaching and research.

Dr Taylor said: “There’s the element of underemployed and unemployed GPs – many have been forced to look for alternatives.

“It’s also the case that the intensity of working five days a week in NHS general practice is too high.”

Dr Taylor also provided comment to GP Online on its report that half of GP workforce growth in the last financial year came from jobs created through the additional roles reimbursement scheme (ARRS).

Workforce rebalancing

He said: “There needs to be a rebalancing of the workforce, because we’ve been under-employing GPs for some time.”

Elsewhere, Dr Taylor welcomed new NHS England guidance for planned patient care which sets out what patients and carers should expect when patients are referred for non-urgent NHS care as ‘a step in the right direction’ but said it ‘doesn’t go far enough’.

Speaking to Pulse, he said: “Patients are currently left in the dark about the referral process and where they are on the journey to seeing a specialist or waiting for an investigation. This should save some time for GP practices.”

Picture credit: Andy Burnham/Facebook

We are a non-profit campaigning and lobbying organisation led by frontline doctors, for frontline doctors. We are volunteers and our collective aim is to give frontline workers a voice to be heard.

Please support our work by contributing to our crowd funder.

Doctors Association UK (DAUK) has written to health secretary James Murray urging the introduction of clear national standards to ensure patients referred to hospital by a GP are assessed by a doctor.

DAUK GP co-leads Dr Sarah Jacques and Dr Steve Taylor wrote to Mr Murray following coroners’ reports into the deaths of nine-year-old Dylan Cope and eight-year-old Ethan Hanson.

They were both urgently referred to hospital by their GPs with suspected appendicitis but, according to the coroners’ findings, were not assessed by a doctor after arriving at hospital.

The letter has been featured by The BMJ, Pulse and Doctors.net.uk

In it, Dr Jacques and Dr Taylor called on the government to introduce national standards requiring patients urgently referred to hospital by a GP to be assessed by a doctor.

The letter also asks to ensure that no patient with undifferentiated symptoms is assessed or discharged without doctor oversight.

DAUK has invited Mr Murray and Department of Health officials to discuss the proposals.

Read the letter in full.

We are a non-profit campaigning and lobbying organisation led by frontline doctors, for frontline doctors. We are volunteers and our collective aim is to give frontline workers a voice to be heard.

Please support our work by contributing to our crowd funder.

In the latest episode of the Not The NHS Again podcast, host Dr Steve Taylor, DAUK’s GP co-lead, is joined by campaigners Brenda Allen and Pamela Martin to explore why palliative care continues to be underfunded, fragmented and too often dependent on charitable funding.

They examine the growing gap between need and provision, discussing how decades of underinvestment have left many people without the support they need to die with dignity.

The episode highlights why better investment in community services, primary care, hospices, and specialist teams could improve quality of life and reduce unnecessary hospital admissions.

The episode also looks at successful models from elsewhere in Europe, the importance of planning for an ageing population, and why we need to have more open conversations about death and dying.

Listen now to discover why transforming palliative care is not only the right thing to do, but one of the smartest investments our healthcare system can make.

Not The NHS Again is a collaboration between Keep Our NHS Public and DAUK.

All episodes are available on Spotify and YouTube.

We are a non-profit campaigning and lobbying organisation led by frontline doctors, for frontline doctors. We are volunteers and our collective aim is to give frontline workers a voice to be heard.

Please support our work by contributing to our crowd funder.

Doctors Association UK (DAUK) GP co-leads Dr Sarah Jacques and Dr Steve Taylor highlight the cases of nine-year-old Dylan Cope and eight-year-old Ethan Hanson.

In both cases, the children were appropriately assessed in primary care and urgently referred to hospital by their GP.

However, according to the coroners’ findings, neither child was assessed by a doctor after arriving at hospital.

Patient safety

Dr Jacques and Dr Taylor’s letter states: “These cases raise serious questions about the safety of current assessment systems in emergency departments and the roles of non-doctors.

“When a GP refers a patient to hospital, that referral represents a clinical judgment that is the equivalent of a medical consultant opinion in the community, and thus necessitates a further medical assessment.”

DAUK is urging health secretary James Murray to introduce clear national standards to ensure patients referred by GPs are assessed by a doctor on arrival in hospital.

They are:

• Any patient referred by a community GP to hospital by a GP must be assessed by a doctor in the hospital.
• No patient presenting with undifferentiated (undiagnosed) symptoms should be allowed to be assessed or discharged without the approval of a doctor.
• We ask the Secretary of State to review the current status of assessments in emergency departments to ensure patient safety is the priority and that doctors are involved in all cases of undifferentiated care and GP referrals.

Improvements in clinical practice

In their letter, Dr Jacques and Dr Taylor said: “It’s vital we ensure that the issues identified by the coroners in the cases of Dylan Cope and Ethan Hanson lead to improvements in clinical practice.”

DAUK has invited Mr Murray and Department of Health officials to discuss the proposals.

Read the letter in full.

We are a non-profit campaigning and lobbying organisation led by frontline doctors, for frontline doctors. We are volunteers and our collective aim is to give frontline workers a voice to be heard.

Please support our work by contributing to our crowd funder.

Speaking at events organised by the Independent Pharmacies Association and publisher Cogora, Dr Taylor highlighted the need for greater collaboration across primary care professions.

He used the platforms to argue for a more joined-up approach to funding and service delivery.

The first event, hosted by the Independent Pharmacies Association at The Belfry, brought together pharmacy leaders from across the country.

Primary care funding

Dr Taylor was invited to speak on the GP contract and the wider challenges facing primary care funding.

His presentation focused on the long-term decline in investment across primary care, including general practice and community pharmacy, and the need for the professions to work together to secure a greater share of NHS funding.

Dr Taylor said: “Primary care includes GPs, pharmacists, dentists and optometrists.

“Rather than competing with one another, we need to be making a collective case for greater investment in the services that provide the vast majority of patient contacts in the NHS.”

Networking

Dr Taylor said the session was well received, with many delegates approaching him afterwards to discuss the issues raised.

The event also provided valuable networking opportunities, including discussions with senior pharmacy leaders and representatives from across the healthcare sector.

The second event was the Community Pharmacy and General Practice Conference.

The conference was organised by Cogora, the publisher of Pulse and The Pharmacist, and the National Pharmacy Association

It brought together community pharmacy and general practice professionals at the National Conference Centre near the NEC.

Improving vaccine uptake

Dr Taylor delivered a presentation on immunisation programmes and the shared responsibilities of GPs and pharmacists in improving vaccine uptake.

A central theme of his talk was the need to move beyond competition and focus on unvaccinated people.

He said: “We shouldn’t be squabbling over the 70 per cent of people who are already willing to be vaccinated, we should be developing a joint strategy to reach the 30 per cent who aren’t.”

Dr Taylor’s comments were included in a blog by Pulse editor Sofia Lind on how the current funding arrangements can unintentionally encourage competition between GPs and pharmacists, when greater cooperation would serve patients better.

Alongside his presentation, Dr Taylor co-hosted the conference’s Hall of Heroes session with healthcare leader Tara Humphrey.

Collaboration and innovation

This session celebrated examples of successful collaboration and innovation in community pharmacy. He also participated in the conference’s closing plenary discussion.

Dr Taylor said the conferences provided an opportunity to build stronger relationships between general practice and pharmacy.

He said: “Primary care is vital in preventing illness and hospital admissions.

“The right drift of funding has seen secondary care funding increased while primary care has seen cuts over the past decades, particularly the past 10 years.

Ten Year Plan

“Many health plans have come and gone promising a shift to community care. All have failed and the Ten Year Plan seems to be the latest iteration.

“Investing in existing community neighbourhood centres, GP practices and pharmacies, seems to be a simpler solution for genuine community care.

“The government needs to rethink its strategy.”

We are a non-profit campaigning and lobbying organisation led by frontline doctors, for frontline doctors. We are volunteers and our collective aim is to give frontline workers a voice to be heard.

Please support our work by contributing to our crowd funder.

Host Dr Steve Taylor, GP co-lead for the Doctors’ Association UK (DAUK) is joined by Rathi Guhadasan of the Socialist Health Association and Tony O’Sullivan from Keep Our NHS Public to explore the realities behind waiting list reductions, emergency care failures, and the growing role of the private sector in healthcare.

The discussion examines how political decisions, financial incentives, and outsourcing arrangements can worsen inequalities and undermine patient care.

The guests also outline practical solutions, including investment, workforce support, and a renewed commitment to a publicly funded NHS.

Watch the latest episode now on YouTube and join the conversation on how to protect and strengthen the NHS for future generations.

Not The NHS Again! is a collaboration between Keep Our NHS Public and DAUK.

All episodes are available on Spotify and YouTube. More are on the way, so please subscribe and follow the podcast.

We are a non-profit campaigning and lobbying organisation led by frontline doctors, for frontline doctors. We are volunteers and our collective aim is to give frontline workers a voice to be heard.

Please support our work by contributing to our crowd funder.