Health secretary grilled on further GP redundancy claims

The health secretary has said he is ‘determined to fix’ general practice in response to concerns about GP practice redundancies. 

A caller to Shelagh Fogarty‘s LBC radio show on Tuesday, who said she was a practice nurse from Leatherhead in Surrey, told Wes Streeting that she and ‘multiple GPs’ as well as ‘four receptionists’ had recently been made redundant from their surgery. 

Marissa, as she was identified by LBC, said these redundancies meant the services at the practice had ‘been coshed’ with no vaccinations or cervical screenings ‘being done regularly’. 

In response, Mr Streeting pointed to his £82m investment in the Additional Roles Reimbursement Scheme (ARRS) to start recruiting GPs, and he indicated that ‘hundreds’ of newly-qualified GPs had already been hired via the scheme.

The health secretary also said the £889m funding injection announced for general practice before Christmas aims to help GP partners ‘recruit staff’. 

Pulse reported on GP practice redundancies throughout 2024, including a Surrey practice where three GPs were made redundant in favour of ARRS staff, as well as a Plymouth GP provider where up to 80 members of staff were at risk of losing their jobs. 

The LBC caller on Tuesday, who did not identify her former GP practice, said: ‘I was recently made redundant as a practice nurse in a GP surgery, along with four receptionists and multiple GPs.

‘And the services that are now being offered to patients have been coshed, there’s no one there, there’s been no vaccinations being done, no cervical screenings being done regularly, and this seems to be happening more and more. I see it a lot in papers.’

The practice nurse also asked Mr Streeting what he will do to ‘protect’ patients and provide a service ‘where they can go and see a GP as opposed to seeing a physician associate’. 

She continued: ‘Now you probably know, Wes, there’s been a lot of recent talk about replacing GPs with lower-paid staff or lower-qualified staff. Obviously there is a place for them, but we still need our GPs. Can you tell me what you’re going to do?’

In his response, Mr Streeting agreed about the need for GPs, and criticised the ‘completely bonkers’ GP unemployment situation while saying his Government is ‘dealing with that’. 

‘When I came in, we’ve got this bizarre situation where we’ve got qualified GPs who can’t find jobs, at the same time as patients can’t get access to GPs – I mean this is just completely bonkers,’ he said. 

On the ARRS funding specifically, he said: ‘So within weeks of coming in we put in place just shy of £100m to put 1,000 more GPs onto the frontline before April. We’ve recruited hundreds of those already, we’ll be doing the rest in the coming weeks.’

Responding to the caller’s concerns about physician associates, Mr Streeting said: ‘I agree with you that other staff like yourself, practice nurses, other allied health professionals, have got a role to play. 

But they are alongside GPs, and we are determined to fix the front door to the NHS in general practice.’

He recognised that this will ‘take time’, and it will not happen ‘overnight, or over the next 12 months’, but that it is a ‘good start’. 

‘Of course it’s going to take time, but in terms of all the choices – you’ve probably heard this in some of my answers already in terms of trying to balance all these competing demands – I really have put my money where my mouth is when it comes to general practice.’ 

GPs affected by unemployment or underemployment have recently been urged to attend an upcoming ‘virtual rally’ organised by the BMA to look into the issue.