Brown to tackle £100,000 a year GPs over pay and hours

12 April 2012

Gordon Brown is heading for a showdown with family doctors over their six-figure salaries.

He will tell them to bring back proper out-of-hours care or effectively take a pay cut.

GPs will be ordered to see patients in the evenings and at weekends to justify their bumper salaries - which have risen to an average of more than £100,000 in the last few years.

But doctors' leaders are warning he will have a fight on his hands.

Mr Brown will make the NHS an "immediate priority" if - as seems almost inevitable - he becomes Prime Minister next month.

He will need to tackle a public outcry over the fact that GPs' salaries have soared while their working hours have been cut.

This is a direct result of a controversial new contract Labour introduced three years ago.

This allowed doctors to opt out of providing late night and weekend care in exchange for a funding cut of around £6,000.

Thousands promptly took up the offer, leaving many patients unable to see their GP outside normal office hours. Standards of care have collapsed in many areas, and patients have been forced to call 999 or visit over-stretched Accident and Emergency departments for routine treatment.

Joyce Robins, co-director of the pressure group Patient Concern, said: "The Government, having made a complete pig's ear of the GP contract, is now trying to turn the clock back and make themselves look like the good guys.

"We are set for yet another row between doctors and Government, each blaming the other. This is no way to run a national health service."

Mr Brown has indicated that his administration would tackle the crisis in care by providing more walk-in medical centres.

He could also allow pharmacies to prescribe medicines and carry out basic procedures such as blood pressure tests. But the key move will be tying GPs' income to longer hours.

A source close to Mr Brown insisted the GPs' contract would not be 'torn up'. Instead, he said, the existing deal would be modified to divert money away from those who do not provide out-of-hours care towards those who do.

The Brown camp has denied that the plans would amount to a pay cut.

But the suggestion is sure to put the Chancellor on a collision course with doctors' leaders, including the British Medical Association.

Dr David Jenner of the NHS Alliance, who helped negotiate the new contracts, said: "With the mood of the profession at the moment the re-negotiation of the core contract would be politically impossible because trust has gone right down."

He added that doctors were angry after ministersimposed a two-year pay freeze, which translated into a pay cut after inflation was taken into account.

He warned that "eroding" GPs' ability to opt out of evening and weekend care would result in fewer young doctors entering the profession.

But a Department of Health survey of five million patients across Britain to be published next month is expected to show a huge demand for easier access to family doctors.

Annual spending on health is likely to reach £92billion next year and there are fears that recent year-on-year funding increases will soon dry up.

Salaries consumed almost half the extra money poured into the NHS in 2005/06 - with doctors taking the lion's share.

A source close to Mr Brown said: "We are not going to tear up the contract, but there is room for the existing contract to be used more effectively.

"We need incentives for more flexible opening and better quality services. We will do this through a dialogue with the profession and patients."

A spokesman for the BMA insisted: "We are always open to discussions but what the Government has to remember is that this is a workforce issue.

"The reason that the Government took part in the contract negotiations and signed it off was because there were too few GPs.

"This is not a question of asking the same number of GPs to work for longer hours. It is a question of taking on extra workforce."

Shadow Health Secretary Andrew Lansley added: "Three years ago Labour removed responsibility for out-of-hours care from GPs.

"At any time since, the local NHS could have commissioned longer opening hours for GPs, but hardly any PCTs have done so because of Gordon Brown's financial mismanagement."

In an interview with BBC1's Sunday AM Mr Brown admitted that the Government needed to do better in the face of falling opinion poll ratings and heavy losses in the Scottish Parliament, Welsh Assembly and local council elections.

"I accept we didn't do that well, that we have got to do better," he said.

He also admitted the Government had made mistakes since 1997 - including building the Millennium Dome.

Under a timetable agreed by Labour's national executive committee, Mr Brown is likely to become Labour leader on June 24. He would become Prime Minister three days later - as soon as Tony Blair hands in his resignation to the Queen.

But any hopes that Mr Brown might have had of a trouble-free transition to power were scuppered as his political opponents tried to undermine his leadership campaign.

A Channel 4 programme paints a picture of the Chancellor as an irritable bully determined to dodge the blame for failed policies.

The documentary will allege that he insulted officials and fellow MPs and once grabbed former minister Frank Field by the lapels during a row over welfare reform.

Mr Field tells the camera crew: "We were discussing parts of the New Deal programme and, as I was walking down the corridor, Gordon rushed up and got hold of me and yelled at me, 'Why did you disagree with me? I thought you were my friend'."

In the programme, Gordon Brown: Fit For Office? the former head of the Inland Revenue, Sir Nicholas Montague, also says that Mr Brown "disappeared" during the tax credits fiasco.

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