BMA rally, Whitehall, June 2024. Photo Vuk Valcic/Alamy Stock Photo.
Some groups of doctors have settled pay claims for now. But others are fighting for rises. A massive 98 per cent of GP members of the British Medical Association voted for collective action on the GP contract.
Every government since the NHS was established has paid lip-service to the importance of general practice. But most have tended to neglect primary care, and action is needed.
GPs will decide practice-by-practice on which sanctions to impose and when, choosing from a menu of ten options. These include limiting daily patient contacts to the recommended safe daily maximum of 25 (the current average is 37); withdrawing voluntary services that plug local commissioning gaps; and stopping rationing referrals, investigations and admissions.
Appointments to see a GP are scarce and difficult to obtain. Practices are resorting to the creeping use of medically-unqualified physician associates to cope. Yet trained GPs, ready and willing to work, are unemployed. The Royal College of General Practitioners found that six out of ten GPs looking for work struggled to find a vacancy to apply for.
• The protracted pay campaign by junior hospital doctors that began in March 2023 looks like it’s reaching a conclusion, for now at least.
They took five more days of strikes in late June and early July. This showed the doctors’ resolve to take their claim as far as they could, no matter what the outcome of the election.
The result was that junior doctors have secured a pay offer of 22.3 per cent over two years. The BMA is balloting with a recommendation to accept; voting closes on 15 September.