In a letter to the Times, Dr Taylor, Doctors’ Association UK (DAUK) GP spokesperson, said the law was a complex set of rules that politicians have fallen foul of but continued to work.

His letter was in response to a column by Daniel Finkelstein, ‘Contempt for the law shows contempt for us all’.

Dr Taylor said: “The problem with this argument is that the law is a wide and complex set of rules, which at times are not as clear cut as he makes out.

“Indeed, many of our MPs have broken laws, which have not resulted in their suspension from parliament.

“The public have every right to be protected from law-breakers when they see a doctor, but it is unlikely that they would be fazed by seeing one that has broken a law that does not affect their clinical judgement or trustworthiness.”

Read Dr Taylor’s letter in full.

Dr Sarah Benn

Dr Benn, a GP of 32 years, was suspended for five months following her Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service (MPTS) hearing after being arrested and jailed for her involvement in peaceful demonstrations at an oil terminal. Dr Benn said she had a moral duty to take action to protect health and life.

Read more details of her case.

The Doctors’ Association UK (DAUK) has set up a survey asking for the views of members, health professionals, and the public on Dr Benn’s case.

Please complete our short survey and tell us your views.

The survey has been reported on by Pulse and Doctors.net.

Our statement on the suspension of Dr Benn following her MPTS hearing was used by GPOnline.com.

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Dr Taylor, GP spokesperson for the Doctors’ Association UK, was commenting after a debate on the BBC’s Question Time about so-called ‘sick note culture’.

The discussion included an acknowledgment by Wes Streeting, the Shadow Health Secretary, of the work load pressures facing GPs

Dr Taylor said: “We welcome Wes Streeting’s recognition of the increased workload for GPs, fewer practicing GPs and that they are not the problem for the so called ‘sick note’ culture.

“DAUK agrees with Mr Streeting that the issues are with patients waiting, with mental health services being under resourced, and with GP practices being overwhelmed with more work and fewer GPs.

“It’s important that GPs are fully involved in helping provide the solutions, listened to, and resourced to provide what is needed to support patient care.

“We don’t agree that GPs are ‘dishing out’ sick notes. GPs are often best placed to understand the full circumstances of a person sat before them or on the phone.

“Reform of sick notes could be an extension of self-certification, similar to during the pandemic, when it was extended to 28 days.

GP funding

“Ultimately GPs need resources not cuts, which currently is the experience of general practice. 

“And with a properly resourced primary care, we can do so much to prevent illness and do so much to help get people back into work.”

Mr Streeting set out how, if voted in at the next election, a Labour Government would tackle the crisis facing general practice.

“Of course GPs are having a real problem with their work load,” Mr Streeting said.

“If we want to sort this problem out then let’s deliver 2 million more appointments a year to cut NHS waiting lists.

Mental health support

Let’s have mental health support in every school. Let’s have mental health hubs in every community.

“Let’s double the number of scanners so we can diagnose earlier and treat faster.

“If we can get people treated and back on their feet we can get them back to work.”

Chris Philps, the Policing Minister, told the programme there were 850,000 more people on long-term sick since the pandemic.

Discussing plans announced by the Government this week to strip GPs of their power to sign people off and replace them with ‘specialist work and health professionals’, he was asked by host Fiona Bruce what makes them more qualified to sign people off.

Mr Philps said: “This is a very particular specialisation. They will be trained to identify what people can do, what they’re able to do rather than just sign them off as sick.

GPs under pressure

“GPs are under lots of pressure. We would rather they were seeing patients.

“There is also a concern that GPs being busy, being under pressure, might just be a little bit too quick to sign off a sick note.

“Having someone who is specialised in that area and who can think about what the individual is able to do, what things can they do with their condition, is a slightly more constructive way to look at it.”

Munira Wilson, the Liberal Democrats’ education spokesperson, said: “People who can’t work desperately want to work but are stuck on NHS waiting lists.”

She said the Lib Dems would introduce a ‘GP guarantee’ that you could see a GP within seven days by recruiting another 8,000 GPs.

“We also need to talk about public health,” she added. “We need to help people to stay well better.”

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Watch the Question Time debate again.

Dr Taylor, GP spokesperson for the Doctors’ Association UK (DAUK), said that the Government’s own policies were responsible for much of the current levels of economic inactivity.

And he called on the Government to invest in public services to improve people’s health and boost the economy.

General practice

“We have 7.7 million people waiting for hospital treatment and mental health treatment,” Dr Taylor said.

“We have unprecedented demand in general practice to try to help people.

“What he’s actually saying is that while we are struggling to get people in to see doctors and therapists, and to get help and operations, and yet he wants to crack down on those very people.

“This is an appalling state of affairs, for a Prime Minister to pick on those people who are in the situation because of this government’s policies.”

Sick note culture

Dr Taylor was speaking after Prime Minister Rishi Sunak announced plans to tackle what he called Britian’s ‘sick note culture’.

They included proposals to strip GPs of their power to sign people off work.

Instead ‘specialist work and health professionals who have the dedicated time and expertise to provide an objective assessment of someone’s ability to work and the tailored support they may need’, the Prime Minister said.

 “We don’t just need to change the sick note, we need to change the sick note culture so the default becomes what work you can do – not what you can’t,” Mr Sunak said.

“Building on the pilots we’ve already started we’re going to design a new system where people have easy and rapid access to specialised work and health support to help them back to work from the very first fit note conversation.  

“We’re also going to test shifting the responsibility for assessment from GPs and giving it to specialist work and health professionals who have the dedicated time to provide an objective assessment of someone’s ability to work and the tailored support they need to do so.”  

Invest in health

Posting on X, formerly Twitter, Dr Taylor said: “If Government invested in health the economy would be £150bn better off, and we would have fewer off sick.

“If you don’t invest in health you get more long-term sick.

“This is not rocket science or even simple maths, yet we have a Prime Minister picking on those that his Government has left without support both physical and mental health.”

Dr Taylor, GP spokesperson for the Doctors’ Association UK (DAUK), was responding to a new study by academics from the University of Leicester which found that seeing the same GP could help people live longer.

Living in areas of England with more fully qualified GPs and better funded surgeries all had a positive impact, the research found.

Dr Taylor told national radio listeners that GPs agreed with the findings, but that there were not enough to deliver the care patients deserve because of a retention crisis.

Speaking on the Nick Ferrari programme on LBC, Dr Taylor said: “This study says basically what we all know, we would all benefit from seeing the same doctor and GPs totally agree with that.

“Retention of GPs is a problem.

“Fundamentally, it’s down to some of the decision making at NHS England and funding arrangements.

“There’s been a 20 per cent reduction in funding for GP practices, which means it’s hard to employ and retain GPs.”

Dr Taylor told LBC listeners that GPs receive around £165 per patient per year. The figures has risen by £13 since 2015, representing a 20 per cent real terms reduction over the past nine years, while the numbers of patients they’re seeing has risen.

“The average in the UK is 2,300 patients per GP,” he said. “It was 1,800 in 2015.

“GPs coming through training, there just isn’t the funding to support the employment of many of them.”

Posting on X, formerly known as Twitter, Dr Taylor added: “NHS England need to fund GP practices so they can recruit and retain GPs, instead of funding cuts & supporting only ARRS (Additional Roles Reimbursement Scheme) roles.”

Read more on the University of Leicester study.

Dr Sarah Jacques spoke to James O’Brien on his LBC programme about the pressures of being a GP.

Dr Ellen Welch, meanwhile, contributed to a feature on ITV about the financial pressures that GP practices are facing, particularly in the north west of England where she lives.

And Dr Steve Taylor was interviewed by Matthew Wright on the LBC breakfast programme about GPs in England rejecting Government changes to their contract in the BMA referendum.

Dr Jacques, who has recently joined the DAUK GP team, described to LBC listeners how general practice does around 90 per cent of the NHS work and receives just over five per cent of the budget.

She said demand on general practice had risen since the pandemic. Pre-Covid, patients would see their GP on average two to three times a year, but now, it’s seven times a year, she said.

Crisis in general practice

Dr Jacques added: “I was working 12 to 14 hours a day, every day, and barely went to the toilet because of the intensity with which we are working.

“People think GPs only have two sessions, morning and afternoon seeing patients, and that’s all we do.

“There are 101 other things that go on in general practice that means we do not stop.

“My pay would only cover about 40 hours a week and to keep things running you have to do those 15 to 20 hours extra each week – and most GPs are.

“Part-time GPs, that people keep having a go at, they’re actually doing 35 to 40 hours a week.

“This is the level of work we’re having to carry or everything would come to a standstill.

“An awful lot of what used to be done by secondary care, so in the hospitals, has now been passed into general practice.

“We are managing far more complex patients than we used to.

“The job has changed considerably. The funding has not flowed with it.

“We can’t say no because there’s a patient in the middle.”

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GP practices at risk

A feature on the ITV Borders evening news focused on a report that identified that 10 GP practices in Cumbria and Lancashire were at risk of immediate closure, with more than 100 others saying they were struggling financially.

Dr Ellen Welch is a GP and former co-chair of DAUK

Dr Welch, a former DAUK co-chair, said: We’re seeing 1.4m patients a day and we’re doing it with 2,000 fewer GPs than we had in 2015.

“People are burning out. People are retiring early. People are moving overseas. GPs have died by suicide.

“The pressures are immense and people are thinking I’ve had enough and I’m not going to do this anymore.”

Watch the feature again.

Meanwhile, Dr Taylor told listeners to the LBC breakfast show that the overwhelming vote by GPs to reject contract changes in the BMA referendum demonstrated their ‘strength of feeling’.

Of the 19,000 GPs and registrars who took part, 99.2 per cent voted no to accepting the national GP General Medical Services contract.

“That’s a pretty substantial vote,” he said. “It shows the strength of feeling.

“It was an indicative vote of how unhappy GPs are.

GP contract vote

Dr Taylor said the contract offer was below the rate of inflation and, for many practices, would not cover the running costs.

“It come on the back of cuts in real terms over the past seven or eight years of about 20 per cent,” he said.

“GP practices have been really struggling to fund the core services they provide.

“They’re doing an incredible job but the reward for that is below inflation financial input, which is incredible.”

Asked if GPs may strike over funding, Dr Taylor said: “GPs are small businesses in some ways, so you’re going to be striking against yourself.

“We have to find ways of making a noise. This vote was a good way of putting our hands up and saying ‘we’re sinking, can you help us?’.

“I’m struggling to see why the part of the NHS which is producing more is being given less.

“The other bits of the NHS have been given a minimum of six per cent this year. Consultants managed to get 10 per cent and GPs were thrown a bone.”

Listen again to the interview on our Instagram page.

According to the British Social Attitudes survey fewer than a quarter of people (24 per cent) were satisfied with the NHS in 2023.

It is a five per cent drop from the previous year and down 46 per cent from the highest-ever recorded satisfaction rating of 70 per cent in 2010.

The biggest reasons for dissatisfaction with the NHS were waiting times, staff shortages and a lack of Government investment in the service.

Steve Taylor, DAUK’s GP spokesperson, said: “After 14 years of austerity, cuts and underinvestment, these figures come as no surprise to me, and I’m sure to many who work in the NHS.

DAUK’s GP spokesperson Dr Steve Taylor says a lack of funding lies behind the drop in public satisfaction with the NHS

“There are a lot of reasons for public satisfaction in the NHS being at its lowest level including poor leadership and poor decisions.

“The most important one is a failure to invest adequately in all areas of the service, particularly in the areas that would make the most difference, such as general practice.

“Getting a GP appointment was one of the biggest frustrations for people, but if we look at general practice, it accounts for 1.3 million appointments every day, almost double the total number of appointments in all other areas of the NHS.

“Despite this, general practice receives just 5.4 per cent of the NHS budget and has had funding reduced by 20 per cent in real terms per patient since 2016.

“It’s led to the number of GPs falling by seven per cent, and yet GPs are doing 20 per cent more appointments.

“It seems to me the blame lies with MPs and not GPs.” 

Steve Taylor, DAUK GP committee spokesperson, said the committee had significant concerns over the reported comments about Diane Abbott MP, Britain’s longest-serving black MP, which have been widely condemned as racist and misogynist.

Dr Taylor said: “Doctors’ Association UK GP committee has significant concerns over the recent comments reportedly made by Frank Hester, owner of TPP, one of the major suppliers of GP IT systems.

“The GP workforce is a diverse community of people and these alleged comments are deeply upsetting.

“It is the responsibility of all those working in and alongside the NHS, in whatever capacity, to treat all patients equally, irrespective of their race, colour, or gender.

“It’s saddening to think that one of the NHS’s contractors could allegedly express such views.

“We agree with other GP bodies that it calls into question the leadership of TPP.”

Mr Hester is founder and chief executive of TPP, which has received hundreds of millions of pounds in contracts from the NHS.

Contracts include running patient consultation computer systems used by more than 2,500 GP practices.

He has donated more than £10m to the Conservatives, which Prime Minister Rishi Sunak is under pressure to pay back following Mr Hester’s comments.

He has apologised on the social media platform X, formerly Twitter, for making ‘rude’ comments about Ms Abbott but said it ‘had nothing to do with her gender nor colour of skin’.

Ms Abbott has described the reported comments as ‘worrying’. 

Dr Steve Taylor, DAUK GP spokesperson

The budget has failed to address the crisis in general practice and provide the funding needed for safe and effective patient care, says the Doctors’ Association UK (DAUK).

Dr Steve Taylor, DAUK GP spokesperson, said Chancellor Jeremy Hunt’s latest budget does nothing to reverse the massive funding cuts to general practice in the past decade.

He said that despite more demand than ever, practices are closing, GPs are leaving and some are without work, describing it as a ‘catastrophe for patients’.

Citing remarks made in 2021 by Mr Hunt, a former Health Secretary, Dr Taylor said the budget ‘won’t turn the tide’ for GPs.

Dr Taylor said: “As representatives of GPs working in the NHS, the budget has failed to provide what is needed for safe and effective patient care in the community.

“Jeremy Hunt said in 2021 of a funding announcement for general practice that ‘as someone who tried and failed to get 5,000 more GPs into the system, I don’t think this package will turn the tide’.

“Well this package won’t turn the tide.

“The failure to mention GPs, many of whom are now struggling to get work due to overall funding cuts of 20% per patient per year since 2016, is hugely disappointing.

“GP employment is a big issue.

“People need access to GPs but the Government has only agreed to give 2% more funding, or £3 per patient per year.

“General practice has been the most productive area of the NHS, with GPs doing 20% more work than in 2019 with fewer GPs. That’s more appointments, more face-to-face, more on the day, more in the week.

“The reward for this extra productivity is a cut in funding.

“Capacity has been reached and yet practices are closing, GPs are leaving the profession and some are without work. 

“This is a catastrophe for patients up and down the country with no help from Government.”

GPs are doing a fantastic job despite the cuts to funding over the past two decades, says Doctors’ Association’s UK (DAUK) spokesperson Dr Steve Taylor.

Dr Taylor told national radio listeners that demand on general practice was higher than ever at a time when it was underfunded and understaffed.

He was being interviewed on the Nick Ferrari Show on LBC about figures which showed more than 17.6 million GP appointments took place at least four weeks after being booked in England in 2023, the highest on record.

This was a rise of 38 per cent on 2022, when 12.8 million appointments took place more than 28 days after booking, listeners were told.

Dr Taylor said the figures relating to the number of people waiting at least four weeks to see a GP were a concern.

But he said demand for general practice was at an all-time high, that GPs were seeing record numbers of patients – despite cuts to funding and staffing – and that they prioritised the most important cases.

He said: “We have huge demand for appointments and there are 2,000 fewer GPs than there were in 2015.

“The figures are a bit worrying.

“GPs try their very best to triage the most important ones.

“If it’s a child under five we will see them that day and usually within a few hours.

“GPs are always trying their very best with the limited resources to try to see the important, most urgent, most necessary appointments within a day or a couple of days.

“It’s the slightly less important ones, which are probably a little bit less urgent, that are having to wait.”

He added: “Are we being a bit negative about this? I think we are.

“GPs provided 348 million appointments last year compared with 230 million the year before, so almost 20 million more appointments were provided in 2023 versus 2022.

“The other bit that’s missing from the statistics is that same-day appointments actually went up 6 million last year compared to the year before, so 150 million done on the day with 144 million the year before.

“A total of 70 per cent of those in both years were face to face.

“So more people are waiting four weeks but more are being seen on the same day. We’re doing more of everything, but with fewer resources.”

The interview also covered a report by the King’s Fund, which calls for a ‘radical refocus of the health and care system to put primary care and community services at its core’ during an interview 

The report said the lack of primary care investment was ‘one of the most significant and long-running policy failures of the past 30 years’.

Dr Taylor said: “One of the things that the King’s Fund report pointed out quite clearly was that the balance of funding towards community and primary care is hugely out of kilter with the amount of work that’s being done in community and primary care.

“I think that’s one of the challenges we have in the country.

“We’re quite secondary care focused. We talk about A&E, we talk about hospital appointments, but we rarely talk about the good work that’s being done in general practice, and also the poor funding they receive as a result of decisions over the past 10, 20, or 30 years.”

Listen again to the interview on LBC. The segment starts around two hours and five minutes into the programme.

Dr Steve Taylor, DAUK spokesperson, said GPs were carrying out more face-to-face appointments than before the pandemic PLUS an additional 20 to 25 per cent online, over the phone or by video.

And that was despite there being a UK-wide shortfall of between 7,000 and 8,00 GPs, he told listeners to the Nick Ferrari programme on LBC.

He said cuts to funding were creating ‘a perfect storm’ by making it harder to recruit and retain GPs, which increases the pressure on those already in practice 

Dr Taylor said: “Funding of primary care and community care – and I don’t mean just GPs but also district nurses, health visitors and all of those things – primary care is generally underfunded, which means we don’t have enough cash in the primary care set up to recruit and retain doctors.

“There are 2,000 fewer GPs now than there were in 2015, which is a huge drop given that in 2015 we knew then that we needed 5,000 more GPs.

“That’s 7,000 or 8,000 fewer than we need now.

“I’ve been a GP for 30 years and it was better 10 years ago when overall numbers of GPs were increasing.

“But if you keep cutting community care the job gets harder and harder and there’s a perfect storm then.”

Dr Taylor added: “Overall physical access to GPs has gone up considerably over the past 12 months.

“There were more people seen face to face last year than the year before, and that’s more than in 2019.

“In addition to that, there were 20 to 25 per cent more appointments given online, by telephone and via computer access. They are the extra appointments on top.

“I know it’s surprising, there will be 1.4m people having access to GP appointments today, and 70 per cent of those will be face to face.”

The interview also touched on some of the issues facing accident and emergency departments.

According to an analysis by the Liberal Democrats, a record 420,000 patients waited more than 12 hours to be admitted to hospital from A&E in 2023 – an average of 1,150 a day – up 20 per cent on the previous year.

Dr Taylor said: “It’s dreadful. I’ve been a patient and I’ve sat with friends in A&E and it’s an awful situation.

“The overall numbers of people attending A&E aren’t hugely up, so the problem is somewhere else, so it does appear to be that the A&E departments aren’t able to move people on.

“Last year, Rishi Sunak said he would try to get 5,000 more beds for this coming winter to cover the problems and, sadly, we’re into winter and have 1,000 fewer beds than we had last winter, which is appalling.”

The interview is available below to listen to again.