Northern Ireland’s government has ‘run out of reasons’ not to ‘properly’ cover GP indemnity costs, the BMA has claimed following the announcement of an additional £1.5bn being allocated via the Budget.
Chancellor Rachel Reeves announced yesterday that the Northern Ireland Executive will be provided with a £18.2bn settlement in 2025/26, the ‘largest in real terms in the history of devolution’, according to Labour.
While it did not specify spending on health, this includes a £1.5bn top-up through the Barnett formula, with £1.2bn for day-to-day spending and £270m for capital investment.
However, the Budget also included a hike to the rate of employer National Insurance contributions by 1.2 percentage points – to 15% – from 6 April next year, which the BMA warned will ‘squeeze GP practices even further’.
It comes as GPs in Northern Ireland are still awaiting confirmation that the Department of Health will fund the 6% pay rise recommended by the pay review bodies for this financial year.
BMA Northern Ireland council chair Dr Alan Stout said the extra £1.5bn allocated to the devolved nation means the Department of Health ‘have run out of reasons not to support, value and pay staff properly’.
‘We need to settle all outstanding pay disputes now, pay the DDRB uplift we are still waiting for from last year and finally, properly cover GP indemnity costs,’ he added.
Dr Frances O’Hagan, chair of the BMA’s NI GP Committee, said the Budget could be both ‘good news and bad news for GPs’.
She said: ‘While we hope the allocation to Northern Ireland can address some of the issues, the costs GPs as employers will now face in terms of changes to the increase in national insurance will be an additional financial pressure.’
In response, the Department of Health told Pulse that the minister has ‘already given a commitment that the Department will have proposals for the long-term solution for GP Indemnity ready by the end of the financial year’.
The minister ‘welcomes the additional money’ allocated via the Budget and ‘recognises that there will still be many competing priorities for a finite amount of funding’, according to the DoH.
A spokesperson continued: ‘The Department recognises the ongoing challenges facing General Practice and the impact that increasing demand and workload pressures are having on GPs and their practice teams.
‘Within the constraints of an extremely challenging financial situation the Department has prioritised providing additional support for Primary Care.
‘This includes increasing investment in GP training places to an all-time high of 121 at a time when training budgets elsewhere in Health were squeezed, as well as providing increased financial support directly to GP practices.’
The chancellor allocated a total of £6.6bn additional funding to the devolved governments, which included £3.4bn to the Scottish Government and £1.7bn to the Welsh Government.
This will enable ‘substantial investment’ into schools, housing, health and social care, and transport across Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, according to the Budget documents.
In England, the chancellor has allocated £100m to fund around 200 upgrades to GP surgeries, with the money available from April 2025.
However, the BMA’s council chair Professor Banfield said yesterday that a ‘concrete’ plan to properly fund general practice was ‘glaringly absent’ from the Budget.
Recent data from the NI Department of Health revealed that GPs across the country had experienced a real-terms funding cut of nearly 2.5% in the past year.
