A London MP has called on the health secretary to ‘reinstate’ a GP partner’s contracts after a Court of Appeal ruled their termination unlawful.
In December, the Court of Appeal ruled in favour of a GP partner who in 2020 was issued with contract termination notices for refusing to cooperate with the local PCN.
Following a years-long dispute, the judgement found that the CCG ‘failed to give notice of a variation’ in the GP partner’s contract and was therefore wrong to serve contract termination notices.
John McDonnell, MP for Hayes and Harlington in West London, has written to Wes Streeting in support of the GP partner Dr Sashi Shashikanth, questioning the public money spent on this case and calling for a resolution.
He said Dr Shashikanth’s patients had ‘raised concerns about how their doctor had been treated by the NHS bodies’, and that the ‘whole ordeal raised so many questions’ about the management of the case.
The MP said there are GPs in other parts of the country who, like Dr Shashikanth, declined to join a PCN due to patient confidentiality concerns.
But he said that ‘other practices in England have successfully come to local agreements with local ICBs/NHSE’, rather than going through a lengthy legal process.
Mr McDonnell wrote: ‘It begs the question as to why this case was not treated in the same way. If it had been, then this would have avoided the very costly legal challenge.
‘There is no doubt that this case alone would have cost a significant amount of money to fight in court and so I ask who was accountable for this decision and the agreement to sign off this cost?’
He asked Mr Streeting: ‘Following the court judgment, I would ask that you liaise with NHSE and our Integrated Care Board to instruct them to reinstate his contracts in line with other PCN’s and GP practices in other areas of England. This would avoid any further court action and the inevitable costs.
‘I would also welcome your consideration to undertake a full examination of this case to ensure that other GPs are not put in a similar position.’
Dr Shashikanth told Pulse that he has also written the chief executive of North West London ICB, Hillingdon CCG’s successor, asking them to ‘rescind the termination notices and offer a local agreement like elsewhere in England’.
NHS England and NWL ICB both declined to comment on this and did not confirm whether the contract termination notices from 2020 were still valid following the Court of Appeal’s ruling.
Pulse reported in December that the judges advised the NHS Litigation Authority, now NHS Resolution, to make a decision about the termination notices based on the fact that ‘there had been no breach’ of contract by Dr Shashikanth.
Mr McDonnell said the GP partner had not joined the PCN because his patients ‘feared’ their data would be shared with ‘third parties’, and as such he would have been ‘acting contrary to the wishes of his patients’.
Given he would not be paid for services usually provided via PCNs, Dr Shashikanth was ‘in genuine fear of bankruptcy’ and ‘had no choice but to take his case to the Court of Appeal’, according to his MP.
Pulse has contacted the Department of Health and Social Care for comment.
The BMA had joined the legal proceedings as an ‘interested party’ to make arguments about the wider ability of GPs to legally challenge NHS adjudicator decisions by ‘judicial review’.
On this point, the Court of Appeal had ruled that the case was amenable to judicial review, which the BMA said ‘marks a pivotal change’.
