GPs must ‘stick together’ to help ‘restore general practice as the cornerstone of the NHS’, the BMA council chair has said.
Professor Phil Banfield made the comments in a New Year’s message to doctors across the UK, adding that it will be up to GPs to determine if their governments’ contract offers are ‘good enough’.
They come as England’s GPs continue to take collective action while the Government unveiled the first details of a 2025/26 financial offer just before Christmas.
Professor Banfield said: ‘GPs in England remain locked in dispute with the UK Government to reverse the unabetted crisis in general practice; a crisis amplified by the scandal of GP unemployment when the country needs them most; a crisis caused by a refusal to fund general practice costs fairly.
‘Only if GPs stick together and work together can we arrest this decline and restore general practice as the cornerstone of the NHS. Contract negotiations in all four nations continue in 2025, but it will be doctors, not the governments, who determine if the offer is good enough.’
In England, the Government’s contract offer will include an extra £889m ‘on top of the existing budget’ for general practice. The proposals also include reducing the number of QOF targets from 76 to 44 and adding practice nurses to ARRS.
The Government is now consulting on the proposals with the BMA’s GP committee ‘over the coming weeks’, before plans to unveil a final full offer in the spring.
In Wales, a dispute is still ongoing over the 2024/25 GP contract offer, which was rejected by 99% of GPs in a vote in November. The BMA urged the Government to urgently improve terms or GPs would go ahead with collective action threats.
In Scotland, LMCs voted in favour of balloting the profession on taking industrial action in protest over contractual terms and conditions in November.
And GPs in Northern Ireland were told in November that they would not be awarded the full 6% pay uplift recommended by the DDRB for 2024/25.
