DAUK’s GP Committee has backed the BMA and the vote by GPs in England to enter into dispute with the Government.\r\n\r\nThe BMA GP committee in England (GPC England) has voted to go back into dispute with the Government, Department of Health and Social Care, and NHS England from 1 October 2025.\r\n\r\nDr Steve Taylor, DAUK\u2019s GP co-lead, said: \u201cDAUK supports the BMA decision and shares the concerns of the wider GP community expressed by BMA.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe Government has failed to listen to concerns from GPs. In particular, GPs who continue to work on the frontline are not being heard.\r\n\r\n\u201cThe most important thing being missed is genuine patient care while focusing on access.\r\n\r\n\u201cGPs care about patients first but are not able to provide the care they need.\r\n\r\n\u201cTop-down impositions from Government and NHS England, without the resources, are a recipe for disaster.\r\n\r\n\u201cAlso a one-size-fits-all solution won\u2019t work, as urban parts of the country are so different from rural areas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIt is vital that Wes Streeting and NHS leaders listen to concerns and don\u2019t get into a fight with the very people who have provided 20% more appointments with less money and who want it to work better.\u201d\r\n\r\nChanges to the GP contract are due to come into effect next month. They are intended to \u2018free up\u2019 the surgery phone lines to \u2018end the 8am scramble\u2019 enabling patients to make online consultation requests for non-urgent problems and queries, from 8am in the morning to 6.30pm in the evening, Monday to Friday.\r\n\r\nHowever, online systems cannot distinguish between non-urgent and urgent patient queries. GPs fear this could lead to potentially serious problems being missed when the important \u2018needles\u2019 get lost inside the huge haystack of unmet patient need.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The BMA\u2019s GP Committee believes allowing unlimited online requests without safety measures built in opens the floodgates to an already stretched GP workforce without increasing any practice capacity.\r\n\r\nIn the first instance, GPC England will consider if any action could be taken to challenge the lawfulness of the Government\u2019s position on necessary safety measures.\r\n\r\nCommittee chair Dr Katie Bramall said: \u201cWe know that the public\u2019s number one NHS priority is general practice, so it\u2019s disappointing to see the Government being prepared to risk patient safety, practice workforce wellbeing and GP retention, when solving this would not cost a single penny.\r\n\r\n\u201cGPs have a track record of being the first to embrace and embed technology in the NHS so long as it’s safe and fit for purpose, but imposing such changes on general practice, ignoring our repeated warnings will do the opposite of \u2018bringing back the family doctor\u2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cBut all is not lost \u2013 we still have time in the coming days for Government to meet us halfway.\r\n\r\n\u201cWe will explore all options, but I\u2019m sure our patients and the profession would rather we find a resolution in the coming days. We want to work with the Government in delivering an NHS that we know is safe.\u201d\r\n\r\nDAUK committee members are all volunteers and campaign on issues facing frontline doctors in their own time. Please support our work by joining DAUK<\/a> or donating to our GoFundMe<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" DAUK’s GP Committee has backed the BMA and the vote by GPs in England to enter into dispute with the Government. The BMA GP committee…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1555,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[389,557,22,304,591],"class_list":["post-1430","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-dauk-news","tag-bma","tag-dauk-gp","tag-dr-steve-taylor","tag-gp-committee","tag-gp-contract"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dauk.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1430","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dauk.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dauk.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dauk.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dauk.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1430"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dauk.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1430\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dauk.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1555"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dauk.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1430"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dauk.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1430"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dauk.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1430"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}