The Government has formally committed to renegotiating a completely new national GP contract, it was announced yesterday.
The promise means that the BMA’s GP committee England has also now officially agreed to the 2025/26 contract changes and that the union is no longer in dispute with the Government.
Previously, GPC England had only ‘tentatively’ agreed to accept the proposed reforms for the 2025/26 contract, including an overall funding uplift of £889m, on the condition that the Government pledged to negotiate a new national contract within this Parliament.
In a speech to GPs at a special England LMCs conference yesterday, GPC England chair, Dr Katie Bramall-Stainer said that GPs have been neglected for far too long and that by agreeing to the renegotiation of a new contract the Government has shown that bringing back the family doctor is a top priority. She also said she believed that GPs are in a ‘critical window of influence’.
However, Dr Bramall-Stainer added: ‘We need to see proof of the Government’s commitment to general practice in this spring’s comprehensive spending review from the Treasury, and in the DHSC’s 10 Year Plan for the NHS. This is where the Government will be able to ensure that general practice can become the jewel in the crown of the NHS in England once more.’
The BMA said: ‘We’re now out of dispute and working on next steps.’
It added: ‘We will now focus on the next steps for key aspects of this current 25/26 contract and look forward to beginning work with the Government on a substantive new contract that can provide safety, stability and hope to general practice.’
The union also said that this is ‘just the start on the long road to recovery’, and urged GP practices to continue safe working and to ‘work with LMCs and re/negotiate local contracts that are under resourced or are required to fill gaps in service’.
Speaking at the Pulse LIVE London conference also yesterday, primary care minister Stephen Kinnock thanked the GP Committee for the ‘collaborative and constructive way in which they engaged in the recent contract consultation’.
He said on the 2025/26 contract: ‘This is a fair deal for patients, the profession and the public purse, and it’s the product of a relationship that’s built on dialogue, trust and respect in place of strife. We see the 25/26 GP contract as an important first step in shifting the focus of healthcare out of the hospital and into the community and towards rebuilding general practice.’
Mr Kinnock also went on to say that the relationship with the profession was now repaired.
‘What we have to do now is crack on and kick on and make sure that we move forward into an ambitious and bold reform agenda. There’s so much common ground between us because the Government needs to free up GPs so that they can do what they love doing and what they’re best at doing, which is serving their patients.’
In addition, Mr Kinnock committed to a future for the GP partnership model.
In response to a question from the audience on whether this Government sees the partnership model as a staple of a new renegotiated contract, Mr Kinnock said they were ‘absolutely committed’ to it.
‘Clearly, where we see partnerships that work very well, and there’s a huge amount of advantage to be had around pooling resources. If you think about the the broad concept of the neighbourhood health service model, it’s about integration. It’s about bringing resources together. It’s about pooling resources. It’s about enabling patients to get a holistic set of supports and treatments. And partnerships absolutely should be part of that mix.’
He added that although partnership is ‘not always the model that works best’, the Government is ‘not in the business of trying to micromanage what works best at a local level’.
‘We are in the business of setting challenging targets jointly with our partners, holding each other accountable for the delivery of those partnerships, and ultimately doing what is necessary and best. For the people and the patients that we serve,’ he said.
‘And if partnerships are the right model to deliver that, we do that. If there is a different model, we do that. We don’t have a dogmatic or ideological position on that at all.’
Parts of this article were first published by our sister title Pulse
